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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



IN MEMORIAM 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
SAN FRANCISCO 

MACIMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 



IN MEMORIAM 

BY 

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
V BY 



V r 



J? Wr PEARCE, Ph.D. 

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 

boys' high school, new ORLEANS 

EDITOR OF MACAULAY'S " LORD CLIVE " AND DICKENS'S 

"tale of two cities" 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1912 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1912, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1912. 



J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



CI.A305392 
NO. t 



TO 

MY MOTHER 

AND 

THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER 

THIS EDITION 

OF 

TENNYSON'S GREAT PHILOSOPHICAL POEM 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

J. W. P. 



X PREFACE 

large as this. The editor has tried to find the golden 
mean between too much explanation and too little. 

In this day when the study of Greek and Latin seems 
to be receding into the background, it has seemed neces- 
sary to explain every classical allusion, and to translate 
every passage taken from the languages used by Homer 
and Virgil. So, too, an apposite quotation or two from 
the German and the Italian have been put into English. 

Probably all will agree that In Memoriam is the noblest 
poem of its kind written in the nineteenth century, if 
not in any century. For this reason it has been deeply 
studied by a number of close critics on both sides of the 
Atlantic, so that an adequate edition could now hardly 
be produced without incorporating something already 
brought forward by others than him whose name appears 
as the editor. At all events, this volume could hardly 
be what it is if its editor had not been able to draw upon 
the stores of previous investigators. General acknowl- 
edgment must therefore be made here of general 
indebtedness to the labors of predecessors; specific 
acknowledgments will be found in their proper places. 

My thanks are due to Miss Minnie M. Bell and Messrs. 
Henry .M. Gill and William Beer, Librarians, respec- 
tively, of the Tulane University, the Carnegie, and the 
Howard Libraries, for valuable assistance; to my wife, 



PREFACE xi 

whose greater familiarity with the Sacred Writings has 
been of much service to me in tracing Biblical allusions 5 
and especially to Mr. Gilbert Cosulich, formerly a student 
under my instruction, later a fellow-teacher in the Boys' 
High School, whose keen literary insight and unselfish 
generosity gave me a number of important suggestions. 

J. W. PEARCE. 
Boys' High School, New Orleans, 
July, 1911. 



INTRODUCTION 

Biographical Sketch of the Poet. The first four children 
of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Som- 
ersby, with the year of their birth, were George (1806, 
died in infancy), Frederick (1807), Charles (1808), and 
Alfred (August 6th, 1809) ; after these came eight others, 
four sons and four daughters. It may be mentioned here 
that Charles later took the name Turner, according to the 
terms of the will of a granduncle, Samuel Turner, and was 
afterward known as Charles Tennyson Turner. Of the 
younger children, this volume is concerned only with two of 
the daughters, Emilia, or Emily (1811), and Cecilia (1817). 
The mother was Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Stephen 
Eytche, of Louth. The parentage of the poet is important, 
for the son of a clergyman and a clergyman's daughter is 
likely to be surrounded, from the beginning, by an atmos- 
phere of culture and refinement. Dr. Tennyson was a 
very intellectual and scholarly m an, whose vocation el e vated 
him to high planes of thought, and whose avocations 
tended distinctly toward the artistic ; so that he is described 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

as "a man of very various talents, something of a poet, a 
painter, an architect, and a musician." The poet's mother 
was the inspiration of the poem Isabel, and Alfred's friend, 
Edward Fitzgerald, describes her as "one of the most inno- 
cent and tender-hearted ladies I ever saw." 

At the age of seven, Alfred was sent to a grammar 
school at Louth, conducted by "the Rev. J. Waite, a 
tempestuous, flogging master of the old stamp." The 
harshness of the master and the cruelty of the boys made 
life bitter for the lad here; and many years afterward he 
exclaimed, " How I did hate that school ! The only good 
I ever got from it was the memory of the words sonus 
desUientis aqitce ["the sound of water dancing down"] 
and of an old wall covered with wild weeds opposite the 
school windows." In 1820 he returned from Louth to 
Somersby, where he continued his studies under his 
father's direction. 

Tennyson was born a poet. "Before I could read," he 
says, " I was in the habit on a stormy day of spreading my 
arms to the wind, and crying out, '1 hear a voice that's 
speaking in the wind,' and the words 'far, far away' 
had always a strange charm for me." When he was about 
eight years old, at the request of his brother Charles, he 
covered both sides of his slate with a blank verse poem on 
flowers, in imitation of Thomson, "the only poet I knew." 



INTRODUCTION XVll 

At the age of ten or eleven, he ''wrote hundreds and hun- 
dreds of lines" in the style of Pope's translation of the 
Iliad; and not much later he produced "an epic of six 
thousand lines db la Walter Scott." At fourteen he wrote 
a drama in blank verse. Most of these first efforts were 
destroyed, but the Memoir contains a few interesting frag- 
ments, one of which, Tlie Coach of Death, seems to show 
distinctly the influence of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 
It seems that he was early familiar with the poetry of 
"Ossian," Milton, Byron, Milman, Moore, Crabbe, and 
Coleridge. Tennyson himself, later in life, speaks with 
humility of these youthful flights, but his enthusiastic 
father exclaimed : '' If Alfred die, one of our greatest poets 
will have gone." His grandfather, however, was not so 
sanguine. When Alfred, at the request of the latter, had 
written a poem on his grandmother's death, the old gentle- 
man gave him half a guinea with the remark, " Here is 
half a guinea for you, the first you have ever earned by 
poetry, and, take my word for it, the last." 

In 1827 Charles and Alfred published Poems by Tiuo 
Brothers, containing one hundred and two pieces, four of 
which were written by their elder brother, Frederick. 
They received for the work £17 in cash, and books to 
the value of £ 3. The volume attracted little attention 
at the time, but the copyright was afterward sold for 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

£230, and the manuscript, found many years later, 
brought £ 430. 

In February, 1828, Charles and Alfred entered Trinity 
College, Cambridge. Here Frederick was in his second 
year of residence, and had already won the University 
medal for a Greek ode on the Pyramids. The young 
men were very lonely at first. "I am sitting," Alfred 
writes, "owl-like and solitary in my rooms (nothing 
between me and the stars but a stratum of tiles). The 
hoof of the steed, the roll of the wheel, the shouts of 
drunken Gown and drunken Town come up to me from 
below with a sea-like murmur." Soon, however, he be- 
came one of a circle of friends that have been character- 
ized as "A rare body of men such as this University has 
seldom contained." Among these were Richard Chevenix 
Trench, afterward Dean of Westminster, Archbishop of 
Dublin, poet and philologist; Richard Monckton Milnes 
(afterward Lord Houghton), poet and statesman; Charles 
Merivale, afterward Dean of Ely, and one of the most 
important historians of the reign of Victoria; Henry 
Alford, afterward Dean of Canterbury, scholar, poet, and 
prose writer of considerable note; and others who be- 
came famous in later life. Arthur Henry Hallam, whose 
early death inspired In Memoriam, was one of this noble 
group. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

In 1829, at his father's request, Tennyson became a 
competitor for the Chancellor's medal for the best poem 
by an undergraduate in any college of the University, 
the subject assigned being Timbuctoo. Taking one of 
his unpublished pieces. The Battle of Armageddon, he re- 
wrote the beginning and the end, adapting it to the 
present ^^^^rpose, and was astonished to win the prize. 
Professor Hugh Walker regards Timbuctoo as " above 
the ordinary prize-poem level, but not in itself remark- 
able : " and his estimate seems just. The next year, 
1830, Tennyson put forth a volume entitled Poems, 
Chiefiy Lyrical, for which he received the insignificant 
sum of £ 11. In this thin book first appeared the well- 
known Mariana, Recollections of the Arabian Nights, The 
Dying Swan, Love and Death, and The Ballad of Oriana. 
Of the many criticisms, favorable or unfavorable, of this 
volume, the following, by Professor John Wilson ("Chris- 
topher North"), is interesting and prophetic : "I have 
good hopes of Alfred Tennyson. ... I should not be 
surprised to see him yet a sky-soarer. His Golden 
Days of Good Haroun Alraschid are extremely beau- 
tiful. There is feeling and fancy in his Oriana. He 
has a fine ear for melody and harmony, too, and rare 
and rich glimpses of imagination. He has — genius.'^ 
Admitting that Tennyson was sometimes affected, Wil- 



XX INTRODUCTION 

son continues: "But I admire Alfred, and hope — nay 
trust — that one day he will prove himself a poet. If 
he do not — then am I no prophet." But Wilson's best 
known criticism of Tennyson's work is by no means so 
favorable as these extracts from the Nodes Ambrosiance. 

The young poet soon became a member of the little 
band known as " The Apostles," a society of Cambridge 
undergraduates devoted to their own intellectual devel- 
opment. To be elected a member of this body "was 
virtually to receive a certificate from some of your clev- 
erest contemporaries that they regarded you likely to be 
in future an eminent man." Tennyson took little formal 
part in the discussions of the "Apostles" (see note to 
LXXXVII. vi. 1). He wrote but a single paper for them, 
one upon the subject of Ghosts, and he was too diffident 
to read it to the assembly. Only a few of the opening 
lines, interesting in connection with some parts of In 
Memoriam, have survived. They may be found as an 
appendix in the Memoir. 

The Eev. Dr. Tennyson died March 16th, 1831, and 
Alfred, who had been summoned home a month earlier, 
was unable to return to Cambridge. Some arrangement 
was made with Mr. Robinson, Dr. Tennyson's successor, 
by which the family continued to occupy the house at 
Somersby till 1837. The year after his father's death, 



INTRODUCTION XXI 

Tennyson published another volume (dated 1833) entitled 
simply Poems. Among other pieces that became at once 
favorites, it contained The Lady of Shalott, The Miller's 
Daughter, (Enone, The Palace of Art, The May Queen, 
TJie Lotos-Eaters, and A Dream of Fair Women. This 
volume was variously received by the critics. The Quar- 
terly Eevieiv printed a savagely sneering criticism, proba- 
bly written by John Gibson Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott's 
son-in-law, but Hallam wrote : " I hear that a question is 
put up at the Cambridge Union, ' Tennyson or Milton, 
which the greater poet ? ' " Tennyson was so sensitive 
to the attacks upon his work that he seriously thought of 
leaving home, as Byron and Shelley had done, and pass- 
ing the rest of his life in France or Italy. Before any 
definite plans were formulated, however, a great shock 
came to him, in the latter part of the year 1833, in the 
death of Hallam, his bosom friend and his sister's ac- 
cepted lover. The poet was silent now for ten years, 
but they were years of severe training and deep ponder- 
ing ; and they resulted in rich fruit, — the volumes of 1842, 
containing some of his greatest poetry : The Epic, Morte 
D^ Arthur, The Gardener^ s Daughter, Dora, The Talking 
Oak, Locksley Hall, TJie Two Voices, The Day-Dream, etc. 
These volumes were far more favorably received than 
were their predecessors. Even Wordsworth, none too 



xxil INTRODUCTION 

prone to praise a contemporary of his own craft, said that 
Tennyson was " decidedly the first of our living poets," 
and to Tennyson direct he said : " Mr. Tennyson, I have 
been trying all my life to write a pastoral like your 
Dora, and have not succeeded." Four editions of the 
new volumes were issued in four years. The long battle 
had been won, and for just half a century from this time 
Tennyson was to be the dominant factor in English poetry. 
Tennyson's love-story must not be omitted, for it formed 
a great part of his life, and probably had a very great 
influence, direct and indirect, upon the character of his 
work. At Horncastle, six miles from Somersby, dwelt 
Henry Sellwood, a solicitor, with his three daughters, 
Emily, Anne, and Louisa. In the spring of 1830 the 
Sellwoods drove over to call upon the Tennysons. Arthur 
Hallam was also visiting there, and he and Emily Sell- 
wood, a seventeen-year-old girl, strolling through the 
wood, came suddenly upon Alfred, who, it ^eems, had 
never seen the girl before. Struck with her beauty, he 
exclaimed, "Are you a Dryad or an Oread wandering 
here?" Six years later, Charles Tennyson married 
Louisa, the youngest of the Sellwood sisters, and Alfred 
took Emily as a bridesmaid into the church. They were 
soon afterward practically, though not formally, engaged, 
but Alfred's poverty forbade all present thoughts of mar- 



INTRODUCTION xxiil 

riage ; and in 1840, as his prospects had not improved, 
all correspondence between the two was prohibited. 
Tennyson's letters during this period frequently contain 
references to his lack of money, and he was forced, in 
1835, to sell his Cambridge medal. 

In 1842, a Dr. Allen projected a wood-carving estab- 
lishment, and " The Patent Decorative Carving and 
Sculpture Company " was formed. Probably with the 
hope of breaking the shackles of poverty forever, Tenny- 
son, who had recently sold a small estate, and had also 
inherited £ 500 from an aunt of Arthur Hallam, in- 
vested all his little means in the enterprise. Unfortu- 
nately, however, the concern failed utterly, and the poet 
was so deeply affected by this catastrophe that for a time 
his life hung by a thread. " Then followed a season of 
real hardship," Hallam Tennyson says, " and many trials 
for my father and mother, since marriage seemed to be 
further off than ever." The lovers were faithful, however, 
through all this time. They were married June 13th, 
1850, at the Shiplake vicarage, by the Eev. Drummond 
Rawnsley, who was an old friend of Tennyson, and whose 
wife was a first cousin of Emily Sellwood. The bride 
was registered as " Emily Sarah Sellwood, of East Bourne 
in the County of Sussex," and the groom as ^^ Alfred 
Tennyson, of Lincoln's Inn Fields." Their married life 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

was exceedingly happy, and the poet many years after- 
ward said, " The peace of God came into my life before 
the altar when I wedded her." 

There can be no doubt that his trend of thought was 
powerfully influenced by long pondering over the problems 
of life, caused by his continuously straitened circum- 
stances ; and there can be no doubt, too, that he was 
greatly influenced by brooding over his long-delayed con- 
jugal felicity, the long waiting for the wife that might 
never be his. It might not be difficult to find evidences 
of these influences in his poetry. 

In 1845, after persistent efforts by Henry Hallam, 
Thomas Carlyle, and others. Sir Robert Peel, the Prime 
Minister, granted to Tennyson an annual pension of 
£200. 

Upon the death of Wordsworth, in 1850, the Poet 
Laureateship was offered to Samuel Rogers, who declined 
it because of his great age — he had reached his eighty- 
seventh year. It was then, in November, 1850, offered to 
Tennyson, chiefly because of the great admiration of 
Prince Albert (later the Prince Consort) for the recently 
published In Memoriam. After some deliberation, Ten- 
nyson accepted the post. 

In 1873 the queen expressed a wish to make Tennyson 
a baronet, but after considering the proposal for about a 



INTRODUCTION XX V 

week, he declined the elevation. The offer was repeated 
late in the next year, and was again declined. Ten years 
later, Mr. Gladstone persuaded him to accept a Peerage, 
and in the language of the patent of nobility, as quoted 
by Gatty, he became " First Baron Tennyson, of Aid- 
worth, in the County of Sussex." 

In 1853 he had gone to live upon a rented estate called 
Farringford, in the Isle of Wight. The place pleased him 
so well that, three years later, he bought it with the pro- 
ceeds of the poem Maud. In June, 1867, he bought Black 
Horse Copse, near Haslemere, in Surrey, changed the 
name to Aldworth, and built a residence there. At these 
two places he passed most of the rest of his life. He died 
at Aldworth, October 6th, 1892, clasping Shakespeare's 
Cymheline in his hand. He was buried in Westminster 
Abbey, next to Browning, and in front of Chaucer's 
monument. 

Among the most important of his works not thus far 
mentioned are : The Princess (1847) ; In Memoriam 
(1850) ; Maud (1855) ; The Idylls of the King (1859: only 
four parts published at this time ; the cycle of twelve 
poems was really completed by the publication of Balin 
and Balan in the Tiresias volume, 1885) ; Queen Mary 
(drama, 1875); Harold (drama, 1876); and Becket (drama, 
1884). 



XXVI INTRODUCTION 

Some Personal Qualities. From his earliest years 
Tennyson was shy and reserved in the presence of 
strangers. When he found that tourists sought him out 
at Farringford, and waylaid him where his private walk 
crossed the public road, he outwitted inquisitive imperti- 
nence by erecting a tall bridge as a part of his own path 
where it intersected the highway, and strode rapidly 
across the latter, but above the head of the unwelcome 
visitor who was waiting to accost him below. Strangers 
upon formal, ceremonial occasions he disliked quite as 
much as strangers who thrust themselves upon his pri- 
vacy. On his voyage to Denmark with Gladstone and 
others, in 1883, the party stopped at Kirkwall, Orkney 
Islands, where the Town Council and Magistrates con- 
ferred ''the freedom of the burgh" upon the poet and 
the Prime Minister. A speech was necessary to ac- 
knowledge the honor ; probably two speeches would have 
pleased the townsmen far better ; but Gladstone had to 
make the reply for both. On another occasion, much 
earlier in the poet's life, the Duchess of Argyll was arrang- 
ing to give a ''breakfast" to "an excellent selection of 
friends " in London, apparently made up chiefly of liter- 
ary men. Though Tennyson was upon terms of intimacy 
with the duke and the duchess, and was often at their 
house, they hesitated to ask him to join the party. Fi- 



INTRODUCTION xxvil 

nally the lady laid the matter before him, asking whether 
he could " be persuaded " to be one of the company. 
His " reply left no room for further negotiations. It was 
simple and effective. ' I should hate it, Duchess.' " 

Yet he was very companionable with his friends in an 
informal way, and his "fumitory," as he called his 
" den" at Farringford, from the amount of tobacco-smok- 
ing done there, was the scene of many a prolonged dis- 
cussion with many of England's greatest men in the 
nineteenth century, among them Tyndall, Darwin, Hux- 
ley, Lecky, F. D. Maurice, and Charles Kingsley. 

His conception of life and its duties, the relation of 
men and women to one another, and the whole fabric 
of human society, was plain, simple, and severe. He 
scorned all pretence and insincerity of every kind. 
"Take this; it is your God," he said to a young lady 
who had told him of what she styled " a penniless wed- 
ding"; and at the same time he handed her a penny. 
As to man's treatment of woman, he said, "I would 
pluck my hand from a man, even if he were my greatest 
hero or dearest friend, if he wronged a woman or told her 
a lie." 

To those below him in station he was kindness personi- 
fied. When he was raised to the Peerage, it is said that 
he was more pleased at the congratulations of Susan 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

Eptoii, old and blind, formerly a servant of his mother, 
than at similar good wishes of "great lords and ladies," 
and he sent a very sympathetic letter about this time to 
" an old blind Sheffield blacksmith," who had sent him 
some " pretty verses." So he wrote to others in the 
world of toil. He even invited to Farringford a me- 
chanic who had read much of his poetry and had dis- 
cussed it with friends; and the two strolled over the 
estate together, smoked many pipes together, discussed 
the poet's works, and especially Maud, the Laureate 
explaining such passages as had puzzled his companion. 

He was a friend to the lower forms of life. Kabbits 
and other wild animals ran free and undisturbed over 
the lawn at Farringford. He allowed neither traps nor 
guns to be used on his estate, and " even moles and ver- 
min were spared until their depredations became too 
serious to be endured." In 1877 his son Lionel gave 
him a setter, " Dear old Don," at Aldworth ; and "it sud- 
denly struck my father at midnight," Hallam Tennyson 
says, " that the new dog might feel hungry and lonely, 
so he went down-stairs and stole a chicken for the dog. 
Great was the discomfiture in the kitchen next morning 
as to what had become of the chicken." 

No man can write poetry like Tennyson's unless he have 
a heart like Tennyson's. 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

Arthur Henry Hallam, whose death furnished the im- 
mediate inspiration of In Memorlam, was the son of 
Henry Hallam, one of the great historians of the early 
nineteenth century. He was born February 1st, 1811, 
and was therefore nearly eighteen months younger than 
Tennyson. Though his father was an Oxford man, young 
Hallam, after a preparatory course at Eton, chose to 
study at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he and 
Tennyson formed an intimate friendship, lasting till 
Hallam's death, about five years later. At Cambridge, 
as at Eton, he distinguished himself by his intellectual 
gifts, being one of the most prominent of the " Apostles," 
and a competitor with Tennyson for the Chancellor's 
medal for a poem on Timbuctoo. Even thus early he had 
a wide knowledge of English, French, and Italian litera- 
ture; and he had already shown promise of grace and 
force as a writer of both prose- and verse. During his 
undergraduate days he projected a translation of Dante's 
Vita Nuova, had done much in German and Spanish 
literature, and was preparing to take up " the Florentine 
historians and the mediaeval schoolmen." 

Visiting Tennyson's home during his college days, 
Hallam became engaged to the poet's second sister, 
Emilia (or Emily). He took his degree at Cambridge in 
January, 1832, went with Tennyson in July for a tour on 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

the Rhine, and in October of the same year began the 
study of law in the Inner Temple, London. In August 
of the next year the two Hallams, father and son, began 
a short tour of the continent. On the way from Buda- 
Pesth to Vienna they encountered wet weather, which 
brought upon Arthur an attack of intermittent fever. 
He was recovering from this, when death came suddenly 
to him on September 15th, 1833. Mr. Hallam, returning 
from a walk, found Arthur apparently asleep on a couch 
at their rooms, but examination showed that " a blood- 
vessel near the brain had suddenly burst: it was not 
sleep but death." His remains went by sea from Trieste 
to Dover, thence by land across the island, and were 
buried, January 3d, 1834, under the manor aisle of the 
parish church of Clevedon, in Somersetshire. Upon the 
wall haugs a tablet with this inscription, composed by 
his father: — 



INTRODUCTION XXXl 

TO 

THE MEMORY OF 

ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM 

ELDEST SON OF HENRY HALLAM ESQUIRE 

AND OF JULIA MARIA HIS WIFE 

DAUGHTER OF SIR ABRAHAM ELTON BARONET 

OF CLEVEDON COURT 

WHO WAS SNATCHED AWAY BY SUDDEN DEATH 

AT VIENNA ON SEPTEMBER 15TH 1833 

IN THE TWENTY-THIRD YEAR OF HIS AGE 

AND NOW IN THIS OBSCURE AND SOLITARY CHURCH 

REPOSE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF 

ONE TOO EARLY LOST FOR PUBLIC FAME 

BUT ALREADY CONSPICUOUS AMONG HIS CONTEMPORARIES 

FOR THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS GENIUS 

THE DEPTH OF HIS UNDERSTANDING 

THE NOBLENESS OF HIS DISPOSITION 

THE FERVOUR OF HIS PIETY 

AND THE PURITY OF HIS LIFE 

VALE DULCISSIME 

VALE DILECTISSIME DESIDERATISSIME 

REQUIESCAS IN PACE 

PATER AC MATER HIC POSTHAC REQUIESCAMUS TECUM 

USQUE AD TUBAM 

[Farewell, sweetest one ! Farewell, dearest one, most loved 
one ! May you rest in peace ! May we, your father and mother, 
later, rest here with you till the trumpet blows. ] 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

All contemporary accounts agree in attributing to 
Hallam remarkable qualities of mind and soul. Words- 
worth, at the age of about sixty, listened to him with 
rapt attention as he declaimed in the chapel of Trinity 
College. Richard Monckton Milnes (afterward Lord 
Houghton) wrote : " We are deprived, not only of a be- 
loved friend, of a delightful companion, but of a most 
wise and influential counsellor . . . and of the example 
of one who was as much before us in everything else as 
he is now in the way of life." Connop Thirlwall, Bishop 
of St. David's, and author of an important history of 
Greece, though fourteen years older than Hallam, wrote 
of him while at Cambridge : " He is the only man here of 
my own standing before whom I bow in conscious infe- 
riority in everything." Dean Alford writes: "Hallam 
was a man of wonderful mind and knowledge on all sub- 
jects, hardly credible at his age. ... I long ago set him 
down for the most wonderful person I ever knew." In 
1879 Gladstone says: "The writer of this paper was, 
more than half a century ago, in a condition to say: — 

' I marked him 
As a far Alp ; and loved to watch the sunrise 
Dawn on his ample brow.' 

It would be easy to show what, in the varied forms of 
human excellence, he might, had life been granted him, 



INTRODUCTION xxxili 

have accomplished ; much more difficnlt to point the fin- 
ger and to say, 'This he never could have done.'" In 
1898, the same writer takes up the subject again: "It is 
the simple truth that Arthur Hallam was a spirit so ex- 
ceptional that everything with which he was brought into 
relation during his, shortened passage through this world 
came to be, through this contact, glorified by a touch of 
the ideal. ... In this world there is one unfailing test 
of the highest excellence. It is that the man should be 
felt to be greater than his works. And in the case of 
Arthur Hallam, all that knew him knew that the work 
was transcended by the man." It is not strange, then, to 
find Tennyson himself saying: "Arthur Hallam could 
take in the most abstruse ideas with the utmost rapidity 
and insight, and had a marvellous power of work and 
thought, and a wide range of knowledge: " and again that 
"he was as near perfection as mortal man could be." 

The Stanza-Form. In Memoriam is written in what 
is technically known as an iambic tetrameter stanza of 
four lines, riming abha: that is, the normal line contains 
eight syllables, with the accent on the second, fourth, 
sixth, and eighth ; the first line rimes with the fourth, 
the second with the third. Much has been said about 
the peculiar appropriateness of this stanza-form for such 
a poem ; and, for many of the sections of In Memoriam, 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

there can be no doubt that it is, perhaps, the best that 
could be devised. It is essentially a lyric stanza, admira- 
bly suited to the music of exquisite thoughts gracefully 
expressed. The lines are neither so long as easily to give 
an air of solemnity or severity, nor so short as easily to 
suggest frivolity or levity ; and the finer sensibilities of 
the sympathetic reader seem, in the less elevated sections, 
spontaneously to feel the lightness suggested by the rapid 
riming of the second and third lines, while, in the more 
solemn passages, the slower, delayed rime of the first and 
fourth lines, with similar spontaneity, seems to become 
prominent, giving greater dignity to the movement. In 
the latter case, also, the uniform, measured length of the 
line seems distinctly to add to the impression of sedate- 
ness. However this may be, it is certain that Tennyson, 
the great master of those psychic effects, that suggestive- 
ness that is inherent in melody, has been able to vary 
the sound-effect of the separate sections so as to make 
each one capable of carrying its peculiar kind of contents, 
and of producing its peculiar kind of impression. 

If he had carefully planned * the poem as a whole, how- 
ever, it is easy to imagine that he might have selected 
for the more elevated sections some more stately form, 
such as blank verse or the Spenserian stanza, reserving 

* See page xxxvii. 



INTRODUCTION XXXV 

the iambic tetrameter quatrains for the lighter and more 
lyric parts. It seems a real triumph of poetic art that 
he has succeeded so well in putting into one metrical 
form so many and so various moods as are found in the 
poem. Saintsbury says : " It is probable that if a well- 
instructed critic had been asked beforehand what would 
be the effect of this [the stanza-form actually used] em- 
jDloyed with a certain monotone of temper and subject in 
a book of three thousand lines or so, he would have shaken 
his head and hinted that the substantive would probably 
justify the adjective and the monotone become monoto- 
nous. And if he had been really a deacon in his craft 
he would have added, 'But to a poet there is nothing 
impossible.^ The difficulty was no impossibility to Tenny- 
son. He has not only, in the rather more than six score 
poems of this wonderful book, adjusted his medium to 
a wide range of subjects, all themselves adjusted to the 
general theme, but he has achieved that poetic miracle, 
the communication to the same metre and to no very dif- 
ferent scheme of phrase of an infinite variety of interior 
movement." 

As to the history of the stanza-form, Collins points out 
that it "is commonly employed by the French poets of 
the fifteenth century, and Puttenham (1589) includes it 
in his scheme of metres." Moreover, independently of 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

this, the instinct of many English poets, from the 
Elizabethan period down, had been persistently seeking 
this form of verse. Stanzas more or less closely approxi- 
mating it, — some iambic, some trochaic, with various 
differences in length of line, — are found in many of the 
earlier poets, and groups of four lines of the exact form 
used in the In Memoriam stanza may often be found 
embedded in larger groups in the poetry of Scott and 
Byron. Bradley, however, gives a considerable list of 
writers who have used the exact form found in In 
Memoriam. To these may be added : — 

(1) A song in Dryden's Spanish Friar, I. i, containing 
two stanzas, the first of which is in the exact form used 
by Tennyson ; 

(2) A single stanza in An Ode . . . William Duke of 
Devonshire, by John Hughes (1677-1720) ; 

(3) A translation by the same John Hughes of De la 
Motte's Dialogue de V Amour et de Po^te, the French origi- 
nal as well as the English version being in the stanza-form 
of In Memoriam. 

Tennyson, however, seems to have known of none of 
these. His words are positive : "... as for the metre 
of In Memoriam, I had no notion till 1880 that Lord 
Herbert of Cherbury had written his occasional verses in 



INTRODUCTION XXX vii 

the same metre. I believed myself the originator of the 
metre, until after In Memoriam came out, when some one 
told me that Ben Jonson and Sir Philip Sidney had used 
it." — Memoir, I. 305-306. Yet, strangely enough, in a 
letter to James Spedding, dated February 15th, 1835, 
Tennyson quotes a stanza in the exact form used in In Me- 
moriam, and adds " I forget where I read this." — Memoir, 
I. 143-144. 

The Structure of In Memoriam. The composition of 
In Memoriam began soon after Hallam's death, and it 
seems tolerably clear that sections IX, XXX, XXXI, 
LXXXV (perhaps all but the first stanza of this was 
afterward rewritten), and XXVIII, were the first com- 
posed, and in the order given. Other sections were added 
from time to time, and the dates of some of these will be 
found in the Notes. Tennyson says that he had no in- 
tention of weaving these together into one work until he 
had accumulated a considerable number of separate pieces; 
then, in his own language, ". . . if there were a blank 
space, I would put in a poem." This explanation will 
account alike for the general unity of the completed work, 
and for whatever lack of unity may be found in places 
in passing from section to section. 

The poet on one occasion divided the work into nine 
parts: I to VIII; IX to XX; XXI to XXVII; XXVIII 



xxxviil INTRODUCTION 

to XLIX; L to LVIII; LIX to LXXI; LXXII to 
XCVIII; XCIXtoCIII; CIV to CXXXI. On another 
occasion he divided it into four parts: I to XXVII; 
XXVIII to LXXVII; LXXVIIIto GUI ; CIV to CXXXI. 
If the seventh division of the first of these sets be cut 
in two after LXXVII, the two methods may be combined, 
as follows : — 

Cycle I — Sections I to XXVII 

Group 1. — Sections I to VIII Profound grief and feel- 
ing of personal loss. 

Group 2. — Sections IX to XX Reflections while await- 
ing the arrival of Ar- 
thur's " loved remains." 
The burial. 

Group 3. — Sections XXI to XXVII . . . The brightness of the 

past, and the dreariness 
of the present and the 
future. 

Cycle II — Sections XXVIII to LXXVII 

Group 1. — Sections XXVIII to XLIX . . Thoughts of the risen 

Christ carry the poet's 
reflections to the resur- 
rection and the life be- 
yond. 

Group 2. — Sections L to LVIII Deep gloom, with scarce- 
ly a ray of hope. 

Group 3. — Sections LIX to LXXI .... The present relation of 

the poet and his friend. 



INTRODUCTION XXXlX 

Group 4r. — Sections LXXII to LXXVII . . The transitoriness of hu- 
man life and human fame. 

Cycle III — Sections LXXVIII to CIII 

Group 1. — Sections LXXVIII to XCVIII . With time and pondering 

and pleasant memories, 
the poet's mood becomes 
quieter. 

Group 2. — Sections XCIX to CIII .... The recurrence of Ar- 
thur's death-day, and the 
departure from Somers- 
by, suggest the passage 
to the next world. 

Cycle IV — Sections CIV to CXXXI 

One group only The poet has passed 

through his night of 
gloom, love is triumph- 
ant, and faith is strong. 

The Meaning of In Memoriam. — The poem is primarily 
a prolonged dirge commemorating the life and virtues 
of the departed Hallam, and voicing the poet's grief at 
the death of the friend. However the singer's attention 
may be diverted by the changes of external Nature, by 
the advent of the seasons in their turn, by stormy day 
or peaceful evening, by religion or philosophy, there is 
always a sense of grief, or, at least, of sadness, having 
its root deep in the consciousness that the companion 



xl INTRODUCTION 

whom he had loved supremely is gone forever from 
earth, and that they can " communicate no more." It 
is the story of a soul stunned by a tremendous loss, and 
struggling to find the meaning of a universe in which 
such losses can occur. His sorrow rises and falls, "eddies 
round and round," passes through all the phases of doubt 
and despair, until he gradually reaches "the firmer mind," 
" the larger hope," an abiding confidence in " That God 
which ever lives and loves." Such is, in a word, the 
meaning of the poem as a whole; but the thoughtful 
reader will note the changes which mark the develop- 
ment. There are several threads to follow. At first 
the poet dwells on a low si^iritual plane. He longs for 
Arthur in the flesh : he wants to clasp his hand, to look 
upon him, to talk with him (VII, XIV). He himself 
feels that he is not on a very high plane, perhaps not 
much higher than the linnet which mourns over a lost 
one (XXI) ; but his thoughts gradually take a higher 
range, and his desire for fleshly association with his 
friend is refined into a yearning for spiritual communion 
with him. At first, too, his grief is thoroughly selfish ; 
his thoughts rest upon no misfortune which Arthur has 
suffered in passing out of the world so early, nor upon 
any calamity which the world has sustained because of 
Arthur's early departure: he thinks only of his own 



INTRODUCTION xli 

great loss. Along with these there is a sense of loneli- 
ness, of isolation ; for his love for Arthur was so great 
as to overshadow all other loves — '' unto me no second 
friend " (VI). 

These feelings are entirely natural, entirely human ; 
but as the poet broods over these thoughts, other con- 
siderations steal little by little into his mind. His very 
love for his friend, unfortunate as its event seems to be, 
begins to take on a distinct value of its own ; unlike the 
linnet's it is an uplifting, an ennobling influence (XXVI, 
XXVIT) ; it occurs to him that Arthur may still think of 
the friend left behind (XXXVIII) ; this thought recurs, 
but now it is less dimly defined (LXIII, LXIV), and 
it may even be possible that the poet's love is still a 
stimulus to Arthur in new activities (LXV) ; and it 
needs only a slight progression for him to look forward 
to renewed association with the departed in the World 
Beyond (CXVI). Parallel with this progression there 
comes to him a faint suggestion that peace may be ob- 
tained (LXXXVI) ; nay, more, he later perceives that 
even upon earth, "under human skies," he may get an 
actual good out of his sorrow (CVIII). 

At the same time he learns to view Arthur's death 
less selfishly ; that sad event was not only a disaster to the 
poet, but there springs up a shadowy hint that it was 



xlii INTRODUCTION 

possibly a catastrophe to the world at large (LXXV) ; 
this faint suggestion grows more definite (LXXXIV, 
CXIII, CXIV. vii). Moreover, the poet realizes, after 
all, that he can love another than Arthur (LXXIX) ; 
that, indeed, his affection can reach out even to a third 
person (LXXXV) ; and after a time he feels it possible 
to have friends among humanity at large (CVIII. i). 

During all this, and suggested by the celebration of 
Christmas, there creeps into his mind the most impor- 
tant suggestion of all, that of the immortality of the 
soul (XXX), a thought that recurs again and again 
(XXX IV, XXXVIII, XL, XLIII, LV, etc.). So, also, 
it dawns upon the poet that, however aimless the opera- 
tions of Nature may seem, there may be, nevertheless, 
divine plans that govern the universe, even to such insig- 
nificant details as a worm or a moth (LIV) ; in a trance 
he gets a glimpse of these plans (XCV) ; he realizes that 
there is a Power that rules (XCVI) ; he finds that Power 
(CXXIV), and he feels that "all is well" (CXXVI, 
CXXVII). Perhaps it is best to repeat that, as hinted 
above, none of these progressions, perhaps, are quite 
directly forward ; that would hardly be good psychology, 
and it would hardly be good poetry. For relapses, see 
XXXIX, XLIX, LVI, LXXXIV. xii, XCV. xi, etc. 
Tennyson sometimes called the poem The Way of 



INTRODUCTION xliii 

the Soul, and the title was by no means inappro- 
priate. 

Thus considered, however, the work was personal, in- 
tensely personal ; but its value to the rest of the world 
lies in the fact that its symbolism and its lessons apply, 
in greater or less degree, to all mankind. Tennyson is 
simply a type of humanity in general, and his sorrow 
that something had gone out of his life, his gropings in 
the gloom, his conflicts with doubt, his slow and painful 
emergence into light, and his final triumph are, or, at least, 
may be, symbolical of the development of every human 
soul. 

Characteristics of Tennyson's Poetry. Tennyson took 
very great pains with his work, earnestly endeavoring to 
make it the very best of which he was capable. He was 
his own severest critic. Many poems were burnt almost 
as soon as written, because they did not sufficiently please 
the poet's exacting taste, and many others were rejected 
because of slight defects, such as most poets would have 
ignored. Nor did his corrections cease with publication, 
for a comparison of first editions with later ones shows 
many changes in the interest of greater clearness or of 
greater polish of phrase. 

His observation of Nature was extremely exact, no 
detail escaping his eye. Few poets have painted land- 



xliv INTRODUCTION 

scape as truly to Nature as he ; and probably he will long 
remain the most faithful depicter of distinctively English 
scenery. With sure selection he seizes upon the essential 
element of description in cloud, tree, rock, or stream, and 
the reader receives a more profound impression from sug- 
gestion than from the explicit meaning of the words em- 
ployed. In a way peculiarly his own he idealizes the 
natural objects which form the background of his poems, 
and breathes into them an almost sentient spirit which 
speaks to the spirit of the reader in tones of dim and 
vague, but yet powerful, suggestiveness. He does not 
simply paint scenes so as to bring them before the eye : 
he first selects scenes that have a real, though dimly 
defined, meaning in connection with the undertone of his 
thoughts during the description. Perhaps this may be 
easier to appreciate if we consider a specific example : — 

" Dark house, by which once more I stand 
Here in the long unlovely street, 
Doors, where my heart was used to beat 
So quickly, waiting for a hand, 
A hand that can be clasp'd no more." 

— In Memoriam^ VII. i-ii. 

The words "Dark house" may suggest that Hallam's 
life has been darkened by Death; "the long unlovely 
street " (in the darkness of the " earliest morning ") may 



INTRODUCTION xlv 

be a symbol of the '' long unlovely " life which the poet 
sees before him in the darkness of futurity; the third 
and fourth lines may hint that it is useless now to wait ; 
and the fifth line may symbolize the fact that Hallam's 
friendship (of which the clasping of hands is the token) 
is a thing of the past. These symbolisms are easy to 
point out and easy to appreciate ; but Tennyson's scenery 
is often, very often, characterized by suggestions of this 
kind that may not be pointed out. Some of them are too 
delicately exquisite to endure even a breath of explana- 
tion : they may be shattered with a touch. Each reader 
must find them for himself, and feel them for himself. 
There is in much of Tennyson's poetry an undefined 
but still pervasive feeling which ranges from peaceful 
quietness through all the gradations of soberness, 
earnestness, seriousness, sadness, mournfulness, solem- 
nity, and austerity. This may possibly be attributed, in 
some degree at least, to a fusion of two elements : first, 
his innately high and pure conception of life and its 
meaning; and, second, his reflections upon life as he 
saw it about him. See also page xxiv. Whatever the 
cause, however, this touch is felt, and is so dominant in 
some of his poems — The May-Queen, for example — that 
it would be difficult after reading but the first stanza to 
imagine a joyful conclusion for the story. This air is 



xlvi INTRODUCTION 

noticeable even in the Epilogue to In Memoriam, of which 
the poet himself said, " It was intended to be a kind of 
Divina CommecUa, ending with happiness " ; for after the 
twenty-seventh stanza he relapses into a mood of elevated 
reflection, with which he concludes the poem. 

One of the most important of Tennyson's characteristics 
was his sensitiveness to sound-effect. Few poets ever 
excelled him in this. In common with many others he 
made great use of what is plainly and distinctly onomato- 
poeia. Thus, any one can hear the moaning of doves 
and the buzzing of bees in the oft-quoted lines : — 

" The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
And murmuring of innumerable bees." 

— The Princess, VII. 206-207. 

the whinnying of a horse in 
"... the gray mare 
Is ill to live with when her whinny shrills 
From tile to scullery ..." 

— The Princess, V. 441-443. 

the labored breathing of a tired horse in the second of 
the following lines : — 

" But after sod and shingle ceased to fly 
Behind her, and the heart of her good horse 
Was nigh to burst with violence ..." 

— Gareth and Lynette, 742-744. 



INTRODUCTION xlvii 

and the uproar of an old-time hand-to-hand conflict is 
finely reproduced in the following sounds : — 

" Shocks, and the spHntering spear, the hard mail hewn 
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash 
Of battle-axes on shatter' d helms, and shrieks ..." 

— The Passing of Arthur, 108-110. 

So he has everywhere, with rare intuition, been able to 
select and weave together words which are full of poetic 
meaning and suggestiveness, and whose sounds, con- 
sidered merely for musical value, add sensibly to the 
effect, though, in most cases, it would be difficult, or im- 
possible, to point out just how this is done. It is no 
wonder that an aged Japanese poet, not understanding 
the words of In Memoriam as it was read aloud to him, 
yet felt the effect, for ^^the music spoke to him . . . the 
music talked in a tongue that could not be mistaken." 
— Memoir, II. 405. Essentially lyric in his instincts, 
Tennyson generally avoids harsh sounds, and prefers the 
soft, the sweet, the plaintive. He especially disliked 
sibilants. Quoting Pope's 

" What dire offence from amorous causes springs " 

he exclaimed, " Horrible ! I would rather die than write 
such a line " (Memoir, II. 286) ; again, " What a bad. 



xlviii INTRODUCTION 

hissing line is that in the poem [of William Collins] on 
the death of Thomson : — 

" The year's best sweets shall duteous rise" ; 

and, once more, " I'd almost rather sacrifice a meaning 
than let two s's come together." This avoidance of the 
harsh, and preference for the musical, is finely illustrated 
in his selection of names : Isabel, Mariana, Dora, Annie 
Lee, etc. Sometimes he plays upon one or two vowels : — 
" J-U'y, fairy Lilian, 

Flitting, fairy Lilian, 
When I ask her if she love me 
Claps her tiny hands above me, 

Laughing all she can ; 
She'll not tell me if she love me, 
Cruel little Lilian." 

His music sometimes rises to organ-like grandeur : it 
is more frequently the music of the violin, but the violin 
in the hands of a master. 

Tennyson, finally, was thoroughly in sympathy with 
all that was best in his period and among his countrymen. 
His age was one of inquiry and progress, of challenge to 
the old and of search for better things, — in the material 
sciences, in philosophy, in religion, in civic and social 
advancement ; and wherever the most aggressive thinkers 
led, there he tried to follow. He was an industrious, 



INTRODUCTION xlix 

though not a very systematic, student of the present as 
well as of the past, and his recluse-like habits made it 
easy for him to wander into many fields of thought. 
What he acquired on these forays he distilled in his inner 
consciousness, and some considerable tincture of questions 
of the day often appears in his poetry. This is plainly 
seen in the Princess, which has for its theme a problem 
that is seldom at peace, — the problem of woman in her 
relation to the rest of the world and its concerns. His 
attainments in matters of, science, as evidenced by parts 
of Li 3Iemoriam, excited the admiration of one of the 
greatest scientists of modern times, Thomas H. Huxley. 
He even essayed to peer into the future of the mechanic 
arts, beholding a more perfect development of aerial navi- 
gation than has yet been attained : — 

" Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales : 
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly 
dew 
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue." 

— Locksley Hall, 121-124. 

So he forecast the Hague Peace Conference, and perhaps 
a little more, when he wrote of 

"... the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." 

— Ibid., US. 



1 INTRODUCTION 

The Question of Plagiarism. In common with some 
others of Tennyson's works, In Memoriam, in a large 
number of passages, shows a very remarkable likeness 
to other poems, in phraseology, or in thought, or in both. 
These correspondences have led to the charge of plagia- 
rism, and the matter has been much discussed. A writer 
in the Edinburgh Review (article reprinted in LittelVs 
Living Age, June 9th, 1906) quotes Robert Browning as 
saying that "to accuse Tennyson of plagiarism is to 
accuse the Rothschilds of picking pockets." Morton 
Luce (pp. 49-52) presents the case strongly against Ten- 
nyson, and Bradley (pp. 70-75), after discussing the 
question with some thoroughness, reaches the conclusion 
that the poet " was sometimes unconsciously indebted to 
his predecessors." 

It might be mentioned, too, that Addison, long before, 
in the Spectator, No. 74, suggests that " the same kind of 
poetical genius, the same copyings after nature "might 
Jead two poets to express themselves alike ; and that Dr. 
Johnson, in the Rambler, No. 143, and again in the Ad- 
venturer, No. 95, in a general consideration of plagiarism, 
presents practically the same views as Addison. Tenny- 
son himself touches upon the matter; see Memoir, I. 
465 n.; 11.385. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 

The Complete Works of Tennyson, published by the 
Macmillan Company. 

Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Memoir, by his Son. 

In Memoriam, annotated by the Author. 

In Memoriam, edited by William J. Rolfe. 

In Memoriam, edited by Eugene Parsons. 

In Memoriam, edited by Vernon P. Squires. 

In Memoriam, with a Commentary, by L. Morel. 

In Memoriam, with a Commentary, by Arthur W. Pob- 
inson. 

In Memoriam, with Analysis and Notes, by Charles 
Mansford. 

In Memoriam, with Analysis and Notes, by H. C. 
Beeching. 

Analysis of Tennyson^s In Memoriam, by C. F. G. 
Masterman. 

Phases of Tl^ought and Criticism, by Brother Azarias. 

Select Poems of Tennyson, edited by Henry van Dyke 
and D. L. Chambers. 

Tennysoyv's In Memoriam: Its Purpose and Structure, 
by John F. Genung. 

li 



lii BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Prolegomena to In Memoriam, by Thomas Davidson. 

A Commentary on Tennyson's In Memoriam, by A. C. 
Bradley. 

A Key to Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam, by Alfred 
Gatty. 

A Companw7i to In Memoriam, by Elizabeth Rachel 
Chapman. 

Tennyson and In Memoriam, by Joseph Jacobs. 

In Memoriam, The Princess, and Maud, by John Chur- 
ton Collins. 

A Tennyson Primer, by William MacISTeile Dixon, 

A Study of the Works of Lord Tennyson, by Edward 
Campbell Tainsh. 

Illustrations of Tennyson, by John Chnrton Collins. 

A Handbook to the Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson, by 
Morton Lnce. 

Tennyson, by Sir Alfred Lyall. 

Alfred Tennyson, by Andrew Lang. 

Alfred Tennyson, by Robert F. Horton. 

Alfred Tennyson, by Arthnr Christopher Benson. 

Alfred Tennyson, his Life and Works, by W. E. Wace. 

Alfred Lord Tennyson, by Arthur Waugh. 

Tennyson : His Art and his Relation to Modern Life, by 
Stopford A. Brooke. 

Tennyso7i : A Critical Study, by Stephen Gwynn. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY liii 

The Mind of Tennyson, by E. H. Sneath. 

Tenyiyson^s Debt to Environment, by W. G. Ward. 

The Great Poets and their Theology, by Augustus Hop- 
kins Strong. 

The Poetry of Tennyson, by Henry van Dyke. 

Tennyson, by G. K. Chesterton and Richard Garnett. 

Victorian Poets, by Edmund Clarence Stedman. 

Studies in Literature, by Edward Dowden. 

The Makers of English Poetry, by W. J. Dawson. 

Tennyson, Buskin, Mill, etc., by Frederic Harrison. 

The Homes of Tennyson, by Arthur Paterson- 

Tennyson, his Homes, his Friends, and his Work, by 
E. L. Cary. 

Homes and Haunts of Alfred Lord Tennyson, by G. G. 
Napier. 

Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Brovming, by Mrs. 
A. I. T. Ritchie. 

Memories of the Tennysons, by H. D. Rawnsley. 

Tennysoniana, by R. H. Shepherd. 



IN MEMORIAM A. H. H. 



OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII 



Strong Son of God, immortal Love,° 

Whom we, that have not seen thy face,*^ 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,'' 

Believing where we cannot prove° ; 

ii 

Thine are these orbs of light and shade° ; 

Thou madest Life in man and brute° ; 

Thou madest Death ; and lo, thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made.° 

iii 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust° : 

Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die° ; 

And thou hast made him : thou art just. 

B 1 



IN MEMO RI AM 

iv 

Thou seemest human and divine. 

The highest, holiest manhood, thou: 
Our wills are ours, we know not how, 

Our wills are ours, to make them thine.° 



Our little systems have their day ; 

They have their day and cease to be°: 
They are but broken lights of thee, 

And thou, Lord, art more than they. 

vi 

We have but faith : we cannot know° ; 

For knowledge is of things we see^ ; 

And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness : let it grow. 

vii 

Let knowledge grow from more to more," 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul, according well. 

May make one music as before,° 



IN MEMORIAM 

viii 

But vaster. We are fools and slight ° ; 
We mock thee when we do not fear : 
But help thy foolish ones to bear ; 

Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light 

ix 

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me° ; 

What seem'd my worth since I began ; 

For merit lives from man to man,° 
And not from man, Lord, to thee. 

X 

Forgive my grief for one removed, 

Thy creature, whom I found so fair. 
I trust he lives in thee,° and there 

I find him worthier to be loved.'" 

xi 
Forgive these wild and wandering cries, 

Confusions of a wasted youth° ; 

Forgive them where they fail in truth, 
And in thy wisdom make me wise.° 



11^ MEMORIAM 



[Cycle I, I HELD it truthj° with him who sings 

See Intro- ^'^ ^^^® ^^^^^ ^^^^P ^^ divers tones,° 

duction, That men may rise on stepping-stones'^ 

pagexxxvii.] q^ ^j^^-^, ^^^^ selves° to higher things. 



11 
But who shall so forecast the years 

And find in loss a gain to match ? 

Or reach a hand thro' time to catch 
The far-off interest of tears° ? 

iii 

Let Love clasp Grief ° lest both be drown'd, 
Let darkness keep her raven gloss° : 
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, 

To dance with death, to beat the ground,° 

iv 

Than that the victor Hours° should scorn 
The long result of love, and boast, 
" Behold the man that loved and lost,° 

But all he was is overworn." 



IN MEMORIAM 
II 



Old Yew, which graspest at the stones° 
That name the under-lying dead, 
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,° 

Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. 

ii 
The seasons bring the flower again. 

And bring the firstling to the flock ; 

And in the dusk of thee, the clock 
Beats out the little lives of men.° 

iii 

O not for thee the glow, the bloom, 
Who changest not in any gale. 
Nor branding summer suns avail 

To touch thy thousand years of gloom : 

iv 
And gazing on thee, sullen tree. 

Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, 
I seem to fail from out my blood 
And grow incorporate into thee.° 



IN MEMORIAM 
III 



Sorrow, cruel fellowship," 

O Priestess in the vaults of Death, 
sweet and bitter in a breath,° 

What whispers from thy lying lip° ? 

ii 
" The stars," she whispers, " blindly run° ; 

A web is wov'n across the sky ; 

From out waste places comes a cry,° 
And murmurs from the dying sun° ; 



" And all the phantom, Nature,° stands 
With all the music in her tone, 
A hollow echo of my own, — 

A hollow form with empty hands." 

iv 
And shall I take a thing so blind. 

Embrace her as my natural good ; 

Or crush her, like a vice of blood, 
Upon the threshold of the mind ? 



IN MEMORIAM 
IV 



To Sleep I give my powers away ; 

My will is bondsman to the dark ; 

I sit within a helmless bark, 
And with my heart I muse and say : 

ii 

heart, how fares it with thee now, 

That thou should'st fail from thy desire, 
Who scarcely darest to inquire, 

" What is it makes me beat so low ? '^ 

iii 
Something it is which thou hast lost, 

Some pleasure from thine early years. 

Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, 
That grief hath shaken into frost° ! 



Such clouds of nameless trouble cross 
All night below the darken'd eyes° ; 
With morning wakes the will, and cries, 

" Thou shalt not be the fool of loss." 



IN ME MORI AM 



1 
I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin 

To put in words the grief I f eeF ; 

For words, like Nature, half reveal 
And half conceal the Soul within. 

ii 

But,* for the unqniet heart and brain, 
A use in measured language lies ; 
The sad mechanic exercise. 

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.° 

iii 

In words, like weeds,° I'll wrap me o'er, 
Like coarsest clothes against the cold : 
But that large grief which these enfold 

Is given in outline and no more.° 

VI 
i 

One writes, that " Other friends remain," 
That, " Loss is common to the race" — 
And common is the commonplace. 

And vacant chaff well meant for grain. ° 



IN MEMORIAM 



That loss is common would not make 
My own less bitter, rather more : 
Too common ! Never morning wore 

To evening, but some heart did break. 

iii 

father, whereso'er thou be. 

Who pledgest now thy gallant son ; 

A shot, ere half thy draught be done, 
Hath still'd the life that beat from thee. 



IV 

mother, praying God will save 

Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow'd, 
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud 

Drops in his vast and wandering grave.° 

V 

Ye know no more than I who wrought 
At that last hour to please him well ; 
Who mused on all I had to tell. 

And something written, something thought ; 



10 IN ME MORI AM 



VI 



Expecting still his advent home ; 
And ever met him on his way 
With wishes, thinking, " here to-day," 

Or "here to-morrow will he come." 



Vll 



somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,° 
That sittest ranging golden hair° ; 
And glad to find thyself so fair. 

Poor child, that waitest for thy love ! 

viii 

For now her father's chimney glows 

In expectation of a guest ; 

And thinking " this will please him best," 
She takes a riband or a rose° ; 



IX 

For he will see them on to-night ; 

And with the thought her colour burns ; 

And, having left the glass, she turns 
Once more to set a ringlet right ; 



IN MEMORIAM 11 



And, even when she turn'd, the curse 
Had fallen, and her future Lord 
Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford, 

Or kill'd in falling from his horse. 

xi 
O what to her shall be the end ? 

And what to me remains of good ? 

To her, perpetual maidenhood,° 
And unto me no second friend. ° 

VII 

i 

Dark house, by which once more I stand 
Here in the long unlovely street,° 
Doors, where my heart was used to beat 

So quickly,° waiting for a hand, 

ii 

A hand that can be clasp'd no more° — 
Behold me, for I cannot sleep. 
And like a guilty thing I creep 

At earliest morning to the door. 



12 IN MEMORIAM 

iii 

He is not here ; but far away 

The noise of life begins again, 
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain 

On the bald street breaks the blank day/" 

VIII 

i 

A HAPPY lover who has come 

To look on her that loves him well, 
Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell, 

And learns her gone and far from home° ; 



He saddens, all the magic light 

Dies off at once from bower and hall, 
And all the place is dark, and all 

The chambers emptied of delight° : 

iii 

So find I every pleasant spot 

In which we two were wont to meet. 
The field, the chamber and the street, 

For all is dark where thou art not. 



IN MEMORIAM 13 

iv 

Yet as that other, wandering there 
In those deserted walks, may find 
A flower beat with rain and wind, 

Which once she foster'd up with care ; 



So seems it in my deep regret, 

my forsaken heart, with thee 
And this poor flower of poesy° 

WMcli little cared for fades not yet. 

vi 

But since it pleased a vanished eye, 

1 go to plant it on his tomb. 
That if it can it there may bloom, 

Or dying, there at least may die. 



IX 



Fair ship, that from the Italian shore° [Cycle I, 

Sailest the placid ocean-plains Group 2. 

With my lost Arthur's loved remains, duction 

Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er. pagexxxvii. 



14 IN MEMORIAM 



So draw him home to those that mourn 
In vain ; a favourable speed 
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead, 

Thro' prosperous floods, his holy urn. 

iii 

All night no ruder° air perplex 

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor,° bright 
As our pure love, thro' early light 

Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. 



IV 

Sphere all your lights around, above; 

Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow ; 

Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, 
My friend, the brother of my love ; 



My Arthur, whom I shall not see 

Till all my widow'd race° be run ; 
Dear as the mother to the son, 

More than my brothers are to me.° 



IN MEMORIAM 15 

X 



I HEAR the noise about thy keel ; 

I hear the bell struck in the night 
I see the cabin-window bright ; 

I see the sailor at the wheel. 



Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife, 

And travell'd men from foreign lands ; 
And letters unto trembling hands ; 

And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life. 

iii 

So bring him : we have idle dreams : 
This look of quiet flatters thus 
Our home-bred fancies : to us, 

The fools of habit, sweeter seems 

iv 

To rest beneath the clover sod, 

That takes the sunshine and the rains. 
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 

The chalice of the grapes of God ; 



16 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Than if with thee the roaring wells 

Should gulf him fachom-deep in brine 
And hands so often clasp'd in mine, 

Should toss with tangle° and with shells. 



XI 



i 

Calm is the morn without a sound, 

Calm as to suit a calmer grief. 

And only thro' the faded leaf 
The chestnut pattering to the ground° : 

ii 

Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 

And on these dews that drench the furze, 
And all the silvery gossamers 

That twinkle into green and gold : 

ill 

Calm and still light on yon great plain 

That sweeps with all its autumn bowers. 
And crowded farms and lessening" towers. 

To mingle with the bounding main° : 



IN MEMORIAM 17 

iv 

Calm and deep peace in this wide air, 

These leaves that redden° to the fall ; 
And in my heart, if calm at all, 

If any calm, a calm despair° : 



Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, 

And waves that sway themselves in rest. 
And dead calm in that noble breast 

Which heaves but with the heaving deep. 

XII 

i 

Lo, as a dove when up she springs 

To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe, 
Some dolorous message knit below 

The wild pulsation of her wings ; 

ii 

Like her I go ; I cannot stay ; 

I leave this mortal ark° behind, 

A weight of nerves without a mind,° 

And leave the cliffs, and haste away 



18 IN MEMORIAM 

iii 
O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large, 

And reach the glow of southern skies, 
And see the sails at distance rise, 
And linger weeping on the marge, 

iv 

And saying: "Comes he thus, my friend? 
Is this the end of all my care ? " 
And circle moaning in the air : 

" Is this the end ? Is this the end ? " 



And forward dart again, and play 
About the prow, and back return 
To where the body° sits, and learn 

That I have been an hour away.° 

XIII 

i 

Tears of the widower, when he sees 
A late-lost form that sleep reveals. 
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels 

Her place is empty, fall like these°; 



IN MEMORIAM 19 



Which weep a loss for ever new, 

A void where heart on heart reposed ; 
And, where warm hands have prest and 
closed, 

Silence, till I be silent too. 

ill 

Which weep the comrade of my choice, 
An awful thought, a life removed. 
The human-hearted man I loved, 

A Spirit, not a breathing voice. 

iv 

Come Time, and teach me, many years,° 

I do not suffer in a dream ; 

For now so strange do these things seem. 
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears°; 



My fancies time to rise on wing,° 

And glance about the approaching sails, 
As tho' they brought but merchants' bales, 

And not the burthen that they bring. 



20 IN MEMORIAM 

XIV 

i 

If one should bring me this report, 

That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day, 
And I went down unto the quay,° 

And found thee lying in the port ; 



And standing, muffled round with woe,° 
Should see thy passengers in rank 
Come stepping lightly down the plank, 

And beckoning unto those they know ; 

iii 
And if along with these should come 

The man I held as half-divine ; 

Should strike a sudden hand in mine. 
And ask a thousand things of home ; 

iv 

And I should tell him all my pain. 

And how my life had droop'd of late, 
And he should sorrow o'er my state 

And marvel what possess' d my brain ; 



IN ME MORI AM 21 



And I perceived no touch of change, 
No hint of death in all his frame, 
But found him all in all the same, 

I should not feel it to be strange. 

XV 



To-night the winds begin to rise 

And roar from yonder dropping day : 
The last red leaf ° is whirl'd away, 

The rooks are blown about the skies : 



The forest crack'd, the watei^s curl'd," 
The cattle huddled on the lea ; 
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree 

The sunbeam strikes along the world° : 



And but for fancies, which aver 

That all thy motions gently pass 
Athwart a plane of molten glass, 

I scarce could brook the strain and stir 



22 IN ME MORI AM 

iv 

That makes the barren branches loud ; 
And but for fear it is not so,° 
The wild unrest° that lives in woe 

Would dote and pore on yonder cloud 



That rises upward always higher, 

And onward drags a labouring breast, 
And topples round the dreary west, 

A looming bastion fringed with fire.° 

XVI 

i 
What words are these° have falPn from me ? 

Can calm despair" and wild unrest° 

Be tenants of a single breast, 
Or sorrow such a changeling be ? 

ii 

Or doth she only seem to take 

The touch of change in calm or storm ; 

But knows no more of transient form 
In her deep self, than some dead lake 



IN MEMORIAM 23 

iii 
That holds the shadow of a lark 

Hung in the shadow of a heaven°? 

Or has the shock, so harshly given, 
Confused me like the unhappy bark 

iv 

That strikes by night a craggy shelf. 
And staggers blindly ere she sink ? 
And stunn'd me from my power to think 

And all my knowledge of myself ; 

V 

And made me that delirious man 

Whose fancy fuses old and new, 

And flashes into false and true, 
And mingles all without a plan ? 

XVII 



Thou comest, much wept for : such a breeze 
Compell'd thy canvas,° and my prayer 
Was as the whisper of an air 

To breathe thee over lonely seas. 



24 IN ME MORI AM 



For I in spirit saw thee move 

Thro' circles of the bounding sky,^ 
Week after week : the days go by 

Come quick, thou bringest all I love. 



Ill 

Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam, 
My blessing, like a line of light,° 
Is on the waters day and night. 

And like a beacon guards thee home. 



IV 

So may whatever tempest mars 

Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark 
And balmy drops in summer dark 

Slide from the bosom of the stars.° 



V 

So kind an office hath been done, 

Such precious relics brought by thee; 
The dust of him I shall not see 

Till all my widow'd race° be run. 



IN MEMORIAM 25 

XVIII 



'Tis well ; 'tis something ; we may stand 
Where he in English earth is laid, 
And from his ashes may be made 

The violet of his native land.° 

ii 

'Tis little; but it looks in truth 

As if the quiet bones were blest 
Among familiar names to rest 

And in the places of his youth. 

iii 

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head 
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep, 
And come, whatever loves to weep,° 

And hear the ritual of the dead. 

iv 

Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be, 
I, falling on his faithful heart. 
Would breathing thro' his lijas impart° 

The life that almost dies in me : 



26 IN ME MORI AM 



That dies not, but endures with pain, 
And slowly forms the firmer mind,^ 
Treasuring the look it cannot find. 

The words that are not heard again.° 

XIX 



The Danube to the Severn gave 

The darken'd heart that beat no more; 

They laid him by the pleasant shore, 
And in the hearing of the wave. 

ii 

There twice a day the Severn fills ; 
The salt sea-water passes by. 
And hushes half the babbling Wye, 

And makes a silence in the hills. 

iii 

The Wye is hush'd nor moved along, 
And hush'd my deepest grief of all. 
When fill'd with tears that cannot fall, 

I brim with sorrow drowning song.° 



IN MEMORIAM 27 



The tide flows down, the wave again 
Is vocal in its wooded walls ; 
My deeper° anguish also falls, 

And I can speak a little then. 

XX 



The lesser griefs that may be said, 

That breathe a thousand tender vows. 
Are but as servants in a house 

Where lies the master newly dead; 

ii 

Who speak their feeling as it is. 

And weep the fulness from the mind: 
" It will be hard," they say, " to find 

Another service such as this." 

ill 

My lighter moods are like to these. 
That out of words a comfort win ; 
But there are other griefs within, ° 

And tears that at their fountain f reeze° ; 



28 IN MEMORIAM 

iv 
For by the hearth the children sit 

Cold in that atmosphere of Death, 
And scarce endure to draw the breath, 
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit : 



But open converse is there none, 
So much the vital spirits sink 
To see the vacant chair, and think, 

"How good ! how kind ! and he is gone.°^' 

XXI 

i 

[Cycle I, I SING to him that rests below, 
Group 3. And, since the grasses round me wave, 

auction, I take the grasses of the grave, 

pagexxxvii.] And make them pipes whereon to blow.° 

11 

The traveller hears me now and then. 

And sometimes harshly will he speak : 
" This fellow would make weakness weak. 

And melt the waxen hearts of men." 



IN MEMORIAM 29 



111 



Another answers, " Let him be, 

He loves to make parade of pain, 
That with his piping he may gain 

The praise that comes to constancy." 

iv 

A third is wroth : " Is this an hour 
For private sorrow's barren song, 
When more and more the people throng 

The chairs and thrones of civil power ? 



" A time to sicken and to swoon, 

When Science reaches forth her arms 
To feel from world to world, and charms 

Her secret from the latest moon° ? " 



VI 

Behold, ye speak an idle thing : 

Ye never knew the sacred dust 
I do but sing because I must, 

And pipe but as the linnets sing : 



30 IN MEMORIAM 

vii 

And one is glad ; her note is gay, 

For now her little ones have ranged° ; 
And one is sad ; her note is changed, 

Because her brood is stol'n away. 

XXII 



The path° by which we twain did go, 

Which led by tracts that pleased us well, 
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell. 

From flower to flower, from snow to snow : 



And we with singing cheer'd the way. 

And, crown'd with all the season lent. 
From April on to April went, 

And glad at heart from May to May : 

lit 

But where the path we walk'd began 
To slant the fifth autumnal slope. 
As we descended following Hope, 

There sat the Shadow fear'd of man°; 



IN ME MORI AM 31 

iv 

Who broke our fair companionship, 

And spread his mantle dark and cold, 
And wrapt thee formless in the fold, 

And dull'd the murmur on thy lip,° 

V 

And bore thee where I could not see 
Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste. 
And think, that somewhere in the waste 

The Shadow sits and waits for me. 

XXIII 



Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut, 
Or breaking into song by fits, 
Alone, alone,° to where he sits. 

The shadow cloak'd from head to foot, 



Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,° 
I wander, often falling lame. 
And looking back to whence I came, 

Or on to where the pathway leads ; 



32 IN ME MORI AM 

iii 

And crying, How changed from where it ran 
Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb ; 
But all the lavish hills would hum 

The murmur of a happy Pan : 

iv 

When each by turns was guide to each, 
And Fancy light from Fancy caught, 
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought 

Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech" ; 



And all we met was fair and good,° 

And all was good that Time could bring, 
And all the secret of the Spring 

Moved in the chambers of the blood° : 



VI 

And many an old philosophy 

On Argive heights divinely sang,° 
And round us all the thicket rang 

To many a flute of Arcady. 



IN MEMORIAM 33 

XXIV 



And was the day of my delight 
As pure and perfect as I say ? 
The very source and fount of Day 

Is dash'd° with wandering isles of nighf" 

ii 

If all was good and fair we met,° 

This earth had been the Paradise 
It never look'd to human eyes 

Since our first Sun arose and set. 

ill 

And is it that the haze of grief 

Makes former gladness loom so great° ? 

The lowness of the present state, 
That sets the past in this relief ? 

iv 

Or that the past will always win 

A glory from its being far ; 

An orb into the perfect star 
We saw not, when we moved therein® ? 



34 IN ME MORI AM 



XXV 



1 
I KNOW that this was Life, — the track 

Whereon with equal feet° we fared ; 

And then, as now, the day prepared 
The daily burden for the back. 

ii 
But this it was that made me move 

As light as carrier-birds in air ; 

I loved the weight I had to bear, 
Because it needed help of Love : 

iii 
Nor could I weary, heart or limb, 

When mighty Love would cleave in twain 

The lading of a single pain. 
And part it, giving half to him.° 

XXVI 



Still onward winds the dreary way ; 
I with it; for I long to prove 
No lapse of moons can canker Love, 

Whatever fickle tongues may say. 



IN MEMORIAM 35 

ii 

And if that eye which watches guilt 

And goodness, and hath power to see 
Within the green the moulder'd tree, 

And towers f all'n as soon as built — 

iii 

Oh, if indeed that eye foresee 

Or see (in Him is no before°) 

In more of life true life no more 
And Love the indifference to be, 

iv 

Then might I find, ere yet the morn 
Breaks hither over Indian seas, 
That Shadow waiting with the keys,° 

To shroud me from my proper scorn.° 

XXVII 

1 
I ENVY not in any moods 

The captive void of noble rage,° 

The linnet born within the cage. 
That never knew the summer woods : 



36 IN MEMORIAM 

ii 

I envy not the beast that takes 

His license in the field of time, 
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime, 

To whom a conscience never wakes ; 

iii 

Kor, what may count itself as blest, 

The heart that never plighted troth 
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth ; 

Nor any want-begotten rest. 

iv 
I hold it true,° whate'er befall ; 

I feel it, when I sorrow most ; 

^Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all.° 

XXVIII 



[Cycle II, The time draws near the birth of Christ : 

See" Intro "^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ' *^® ^^^^^^^ ^^ ^*^^^° ' 

duction, The Christmas bells° from hill to hill 

pagexxxvii.] Answer each other in the mist. 



IN MEMORIAM 37 

ii 

Four voices of four hamlets round, 

From far and near, on mead and moor, 
Swell out and fail, as if a door 

Were shut between me and the sound : 

iii 

Each voice four changes on the wind, 
That now dilate, and now decrease. 
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace. 

Peace and goodwill,° to all mankind. 



IV 

This year I slept and woke with pain, 
I almost wish'd no more to wake, 
And that my hold on life w^ould break 

Before I heard those bells again° : 



But they my troubled spirit rule, , 

For they controlPd me when a boy ; 
They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy. 

The merry merry bells of Yule. 



38 IN MEMORIAM 

XXIX 



With such compelling cause to grieve 
As daily vexes household peace, 
And chains regret to his decease, 

How dare we keep our Christmas-eve ; 

ii 

Which brings no more a welcome guest 
To enrich the threshold of the night° 
With shower'd largess of delight 

In dance and song and game and jest ? 

iii 

Yet go, and while the holly boughs 
Entwine the cold baptismal font, 
Make one wreath more for Use and Wont, 

That guard the portals of the house° ; 

iv 
Old sisters of a day gone by,° 

Gray nurses, loving nothing new ; 

Why should they miss their yearly due 
Before their time ? They too will die.° 



IN MEMORIAM 39 

XXX 

i 
With trembling fingers did we weave 

The holly round the Christmas hearth ; 

A rainy cloud possess'd the earth,° 
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.° 



At our old pastimes in the hall 

We gambol'd, making vain pretence 
Of gladness, with an awful sense 

Of one_mute Shadow° watching all. 

iii 
We paused : the winds were in the beech : 

We heard them sweep the winter land ; 

And in a circle hand-in-hand 
Sat silent looking each at each. 

iv 

Then echo-like our voices rang ; 

We sung, tho' every eye was dim, 
A merry song we sang with him 

Last year: impetuously we sang°: 



40 IN MEMORIAM 



We ceased : a gentler feeling crept 

Upon us : surely rest is meet : 

" They rest," we said, " their sleep is sweeti 
And silence follow'd, and we wept. 

vi 

Our voices took a higher range" ; 

Once more we sang : " They do not die 
Nor lose their mortal sympathy, 

oSTor change to us, although they change ; 



Vll 

^' Eapt° from the fickle and the frail 
With gather'd power, yet the same. 
Pierces the keen seraphic flame 

From orb to orb, from veil to veil/^ 



Vlll 

Bise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, 

Draw forth the cheerful day from night: 
Father, touch the east, and light 

The light that shone when Hope was born. 



IN ME MOB I AM 41 

XXXI 

i 

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, 
And home to Mary's house returned, 
Was this demanded — if he yearn'd 

To hear her weeping by his grave ? 

ii 

"Where wert thou, brother, those four days?" 

There lives no record of reply, 

Which telling what it is to die 
Had surely added praise to praise. 

iii 
From every house the neighbours met, 

The streets were filPd with joyful sound, 

A solemn gladness even crown'd 
The purple brows of Olivet. 

iv 
Behold a man raised up by Christ ° ! 

The rest remaineth unreveal'd"; 

He told it Dot ; or something seal'd 
The lips of that Evangelist. ° 



42 IN mi: MORI AM 

XXXII 

i 

Her eyes are homes of sileut prayer,° 
Nor other thought her mind admits 
But, he was dead, and there he sits, 

And he that brought him back is there. 

ii 

Then one deep love doth supersede 
All other, when her ardent gaze 
Koves from the living brother's face, 

And rests upon the Life° indeed. 

iii 

All subtle thought, all curious fears, 

Borne down by gladness so complete. 
She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet 

With costly spikenard and with tears.° 

iv 
Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 

Whose loves in higher love endure ; 

What souls possess themselves so pure. 
Or is there blessedness like theirs ? 



IN MEMORIAM 43 

XXXIII 



O THOU that after toil and storm 

Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air, 
Whose faith has centre everywhere, 

Nor cares to fix itself to form, 



Leave thou thy sister when she prays, 
Her early Heaven, her happy views ; 
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse 

A life that leads melodious days.° 

iii 

Her faith thro' form is pure as thine. 
Her hands are quicker unto good : 
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 

To which she links a truth divine ! 

iv 

See thou, that countest reason ripe 
In holding by the law within. 
Thou fail not in a world of sin, 

And ev'n for want of such a type. 



44 IN MEMORIAM 

XXXIV 



My own dim life should teach me this, 
That life shall live for evermore,^ 
Else earth is darkness at the core, 

And dust and ashes all that is; 

ii 

This round of green, this orb of flame. 
Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks 
In some wild Poet, when he works 

Without a conscience or an aim. 

ill 

What then were God to such as I ? 

'Twere hardly worth my while to choose 
Of things all mortal, or to use 

A little i^atience ere I die; 

iv 

'Twere best at once to sink to peace,° 

Like birds the charming serpent draws. 
To drop head-foremost in the jaws 

Of vacant darkness and to cease. 



IN MEMO RI AM 46 

XXXV 

i 

Yet if some voice that man could trust 

Should murmur from the narrow house,° 
" The cheeks drop in ; the body bows ; 

Man dies : nor is there hope in dust : " 



Might I not say ? " Yet even here, 

But for one hour, Love, I strive 
To keep so sweet a thing alive : " 

But I should turn mine ears and hear 

iii 

The moanings of the homeless sea. 

The sound of streams that swift or slow° 
Draw down Ionian" hills, and sow 

The dust of continents to be ; 

iv 

And Love would answer with a sigh, 
" The sound of that forgetful shore 
Will change my sweetness more and more, 

Half-dead to know that I shall die." 



IN ME MORI AM 



me, what profits it to put 

An idle case? If Death were seen 
At first as Death, Love had not been,° 

Or been in narrowest working shut, 

vi 
Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, 

Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape 

Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape, 
And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. 

XXXVI 



Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, 
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,° 
We yield all blessing to the name 

Of Him that made them current coin ; 



For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 

Where truth in closest words shall fail. 
When truth embodied in a tale° 

Shall enter in at lowly doors. 



IN MEMORIAM 47 

iii 
And so the Word° had breath, and wrought 

With human hands the creed of creeds 

In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
More strong than all poetic thought" ; 

iv 

Which he may read that binds the sheaf, '^ 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave, 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave 

In roarings round the coral reef. 

XXXVII 



Ukania° speaks with darken'd brow : 

" Thou pratest here where thou art least ; 
This faith has many a purer priest, 

And many an abler° voice than thou. 



" Go down beside thy native rill. 
On thy Parnassus° set thy feet, 
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet 

Abcfut the ledges of the hill." 



48 IN MEMORIAM 



And my Melpomene° replies, 

A touch of shame upon her cheek 
" I am not worthy ev'n to speak 

Of thy prevailing mysteries ; 



" For I am but an earthly Muse,° 
And owning but a little art 
To lull with song an aching heart, 

And render human love his dues ; 



" But brooding on the dear one dead, 
And all he said of things divine, 
(And dear to me as sacred wine 

To dying lips is all he said), 



" I murmur'd, as I came along, 

Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd ; 
And loiter'd in the master's field,° 

And darken'd sanctities with song.°" 



IN MEMORIAM 49 

XXXVIII 

i 

With weary steps I loiter on, 

Tho' always under alter'd skies 
The purple from the distance dies, 

My prospect and horizon gone. 

ii 
No joy the blowing season gives^ 

The herald melodies of spring, 

But in the songs I love to sing° 
A doubtful gleam of solace lives. 

iii 

If any care for what is here° 

Survive in spirits render'd free,° 
Then are these songs I sing of thee° 

Not all ungrateful to thine ear. 

XXXIX 

i 

Old warder of these buried bones, 

And answering now my random stroke 
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,° 

Dark yew, that graspest at the stones° 



50 IN MEMORIAM 



And dippest toward the dreamless head, 
To thee too comes the golden hour° 
When flower is feeling after flower ; 

But Sorrow — fixt upon the dead, 

iii 
And darkening the dark graves of men, — 

What whisper'd from her lying lips°? 

Thy gloom is kindled at the tips, 
And passes into gloom again. 

XL 

i 
Could we forget the widow'd° hour 

And look on Spirits breathed away. 

As on a maiden in the day 
When first she wears her orange-flower ! 



When crown'd with blessing she doth rise 
To take her latest leave of home, 
And hopes and light regrets that come 

Make April of her tender eyes° ; 



IN MEMORIAM 51 

iii 

And doubtful joys the father mpve, 

And tears are on the mother's face, 
As parting with a long embrace 

She enters other realms of love°; 

iv 

Her office there to rear, to teach, 

Becoming as is meet and lit 

A link among the days, to knit° 
The generations each with each; 



And, doubtless, imto thee is given 
A life that bears immortal fruit 
In those great offices that suit 

The full-grown energies of heaven. 

vi 

Ay me, the difference I discern° ! 
How often shall her old fireside 
Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride, 

How often she herself return. 



IJV MEMORIAM 

vii 

And tell them all they would have told, 

And bring her babe, and make her boast, 
Till even those that miss'd her most 

Shall count new things as dear as old : 

viii 
But thou and I have shaken hands,° 

Till growing winters lay me low ; 

My paths are in the fields I know, 
And thine in undiscover'd lands. ° 

XLI 



Thy spirit ere our fatal loss° 

Did ever rise from high to higher ; 
As mounts the heavenward altar-fire, 

As flies the lighter thro' the gross. 



But thou art turn'd to something strange,^ 
And I have lost the links that bound 
Thy changes ; here upon the ground, 

No more partaker of thy change. 



IN MEMORIAM 53 



111 



Deep folly ! yet that this could be — 

That I could wing my will with might 
To leap the grades of life and light, 

And flash'^ at once, my friend, to thee. 



IV 



For tho' my nature rarely yields 

To that vague fear implied in death ; 
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath, 

The bowlings from forgotten lields° ; 



Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor 

An inner trouble I behold, 

A spectral doubt which makes me cold. 
That I shall be thy mate no more,° 

vi 

Tho' following with an upward mind 

The wonders that have come to thee, 
Thro' all the secular to-be,° 

But evermore a life behind. ° 



54 IN MEMORIAM 

XLII 

i 

I VEX my heart with fancies dim : 

He still° outstript me in the race ; 
It was but unity of place 

That made me dream I rank'd with him, 

ii 

And so may Place retain us still, 
And he the much-beloved again, 
A lord of large experience, train 

To riper growth the mind and will : 

iii 
And what delights can equal those 
That stir the spirit's inner deeps. 
When one that loves but knows not, reaps 
A truth from one that loves and knows ? 

XLIII 

i 
If Sleep and Death be truly one,° 

And every spirit's folded bloom 

Thro' all its intervital° gloom 
In some long trance should slumber on ; 



IN MEMORIAM 55 



11 

Unconscious of the sliding hour, 
Bare of the body, might it last. 
And silent traces of the past 

Be all the colour of the flower : 

iii 

So then were nothing lost to man; 
So that still garden of the souls' 
In many a figured leaf enrolls 

The total world since life began ; 



IV 

And love will last as pure and whole° 
As when he loved me here in Time, 
And at the spiritual prime 

Rewaken with the dawning soul. 

XLIV 



How fares it with the happy dead ? 

Por here the man is more and more^ 
But he forgets the days before 

God shut the doorways of his head. 



o6 IN MEMORIAM 

ii 

The days have vanished, tone and tint, 
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense 
Gives out at times (he knows not whence) 

A little flash,° a mystic hint ; 

iii 
And in the long harmonious years° 

(If Death so taste Lethean springs), 
May some dim touch of earthly things 
Surprise thee ranging^ with thy peers. ° 



If such a dreamy touch should fall, 

turn thee round, resolve the doubt° ; 
My guardian angel° will speak out 

In that high place, and tell thee all. 

XLV 

i 

The baby new to earth and sky. 

What time his tender palm is prest 
Against the circle of the breast, 

Has never thought that " this is I : " 



IN ME MORI AM 67 

ii 

But as he grows he gathers much, 

And learns the use of " I," and " me," 
And finds " I am not what I see, 

And other than the things I touch." 

iii 

So rounds he to a separate mind° 

From whence clear memory may begin, 
As thro' the frame that binds him in 

His isolation grows defined. 

iv 
This use may lie in blood and breath,° 

Which else were fruitless of their due, 

Had man to learn himself anew 
Beyond the second birth of Death. 

XLVI 



We ranging down this lower track,° 

The path° we came by, thorn and flower. 
Is shadow' d by the growing liour,° 

Lest life should fail in looking back. 



IN ME MORI AM 

ii 

So be it : there no shade can last° 

In that deep dawn behind the tomb, 

But clear from marge to marge° shall bloom 

The eternal landscape of the past ; 

iii 
A lifelong tract of time reveaPd ; 

The fruitful hours of still increase ; 

Days order'd in a wealthy peace, 
And those five years its richest field. 

iv 
Love, thy province were not large,° 

A bounded field, nor stretching far ; 

Look also, Love, a brooding star,° 
A rosy warmth from marge to marge. 

XL VII 



That each, who seems a separate whole,° 
Should move his rounds, and fusing all 
The skirts of self again, should fall 

demerging in the general Soul, 



IJV ME MORI AM 59 



Is faith as vague as all unsweet : 
Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside ; 

And I shall know him when we meet : 

iii 
And we shall sit at endless feast, 
Enjoying each the other's good : 
What vaster dream can hit° the mood 
Of Love on earth ? He seeks at least 

iv 

Upon the last and sharpest height, 
Before the spirits fade away,° 
Some landing-place, to clasp and say, 

" Farewell ! We lose ourselves in light." 

XLVIII 



If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, 
Were taken to be such as closed 
Grave doubts and answers here proposed, 

Then these were such as men might scorn : 



60 IN ME MO EI AM 



Her care is not to part and prove ; 

She takes, when harsher moods remit, 
What slender shade of doubt may flit. 

And makes it vassal unto love° : 



And hence, indeed, she sports with words, 
But better serves a wholesome law, 
And holds it sin and shame to draw° 

The deepest measure from the chords : 

iv 

Nor dare she trust a larger lay, 

But rather loosens from the lip 

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip' 

Their wings in tears, and skim away. 

XLIX 



From art, from nature, from the schools, 
Let random influences glance. 
Like light in many a shiver'd lance 

That breaks about the dappled pools : 



IN MEMORIAM 61 

ii 

The lightest wave of thought shall lisp, 
The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe, 
The slightest air of song shall breathe 

To make the sullen surface crisp.° 

iii 

And look thy look, and go thy way. 

But blame not thou the winds that make 
The seeming-wanton ripple break. 

The tender-pencil'd shadow play. 

iv 

Beneath all fancied hopes and fears 
Ay me, the sorrow deepens down, 
Whose muffled motions blindly drown 

The bases of my life in tears. 



1 

Be near me when my light is low, [Cycle II, 

When the blood creeps, and the nerves Gtroup 2. 

. , Q See Intro- 

Pl*l^^ duction, 

And tingle; and the heart is sick, pagexxxvii.l 

And all the wheels of Being slow. 



62 IN MEMORIAM 



Be near me when the sensuous frame 

Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust ; 
And Time, a maniac scattering dust, 

And Life, a Fury slingiDg flame. 

iii 

Be near me when my faith is dry,° 

And men the flies of latter spring," 
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing 

And weave their petty cells and die. 

iv 

Be near me when I fade away,° 

To point the term of human strife, 
And on the low dark verge of life 

The twilight of eternal day. 



LI 



Do we indeed desire the dead 

Should still be near us at our side ? 

Is there no baseness we would hide ? 
No inner vileness that we dread ? 



IN MEMORIAM 63 



Shall he for whose applause I strove, 
I had such reverence for his blame, 
See with clear eye some hidden shame 

And I be lessen'd in his love ? 

iii 
I wrong the grave with fears untrue : 

Shall love be blamed for want of faith ? 

There must be wisdom with great Death 
The dead shall look me thro' and thro'. 

iv 

Be near us when we climb or fall : 

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours 
With larger other eyes than ours, 

To make allowance for us all. 

LII 



I CANNOT love thee as I ought. 

For love reflects the thing beloved ; 
My words are only words, and moved 

Upon the topmost froth of thought. 



64 IN MEMORIAL 

ii 
" Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,'' 

The Spirit of true love replied ; 

" Thou canst not move me from thy side, 
Nor human frailty do me wrong. 

iii 
" What keeps a spirit wholly true 

To that ideal which he bears ? 

What record ? not the sinless years 
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue°: 

iv 

" So fret not, like an idle girl, 

That life is dash'd° with flecks of sin. 
Abide : thy wealth is gather'd in. 

When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl."° 

LIII 



How many a father have I seen, 
A sober man, among his boys. 
Whose youth was full of foolish noise, 

Who wears his manhood hale and green : 



IJV MEMORIAM 65 

ii 

And dare we to this fancy give,° 

That had the wihl oat not been sown, 
The soil, left barren, scarce had grown 

The grain by which a man may live ? 

ill 

Or, if we held the doctrine sound 
For life outliving heats of youth. 
Yet who would preach it as a truth 

To those that eddy round and round ? 

iv 

Hold thou the good° : define it well : 
For fear divine Philosophy^ 
Should push beyond her mark, and be 

Procuress to the Lords of Hell. 

LIV 



Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill,° 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; 



66 IN MEMORIAM 



11 



That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the pile complete ; 

iii 

That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 
That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless lire, 

Or but subserves another's gain. 

iv 

Behold, we know not anything"; 

I can but trust that good shall fair 
At last — far off — at last, to all,° 

And every winter change to spring. 



So runs my dream : but what am I ? 
An infant crying in the night° : 
An infant crying for the light : 

And with no language but a cry.° 



IN ME MORI AM 67 

LV 

i 

The wish, that of the living whole 

No life may fail beyond the grave, 
Derives" it not from what we have 

The likest God within the soiiF ? 



Are God and Nature then at strife. 

That Nature lends such evil dreams ? 
So careful of the type° she seems, 

So careless of the single life ; 

iii 

That I, considering everywhere 

Her secret meaning in her deeds, 
And finding that of fifty seeds 

She often brings but one to bear, 

iv 

I falter where I firmly trod,° 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope thro' darkness up to God, 



68 IN MEMORIAM 



I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope/ 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all. 

And faintly trust the larger hope.° 

LYI 



" So careful of the type ? " but no.° 

From scarped° cliff and quarried stone 
She cries, " A thousand types are gone"^ 

I care for nothing, all shall go. 



^' Thou makest thine appeal to me : 
I bring to life, I bring to death : 
The spirit does but mean the breath° : 

I know no more/^ And he, shall he, 

iii 

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,° 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who rolPd the psalm to wintry skies, 

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 



IN MEMORIAM 69 

iv 

Who trusted God was love indeed 
And love Creation's final law — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 

With ravine,° shriek'd against his creed — 



Who loved, who suffered countless ills, 
Who battled for the True, the Just, 
Be blown about the desert dust, 

Or seal'd within the iron hills ? 



VI 

iSTo more ? A monster° then, a dream, 
A discord.° Dragons of the prime,° 
That tare each other in their slime, 

Were mellow music match'd with him. 

vii 

life as futile, then, as frail ! 

for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 

What hope of answer, or redress ? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil. 



70 IN MEMORIAM 

LVII 



Peace ; come away : the song of woe 
Is after all an earthly song : 
Peace ; come away ; we do him wrong 

To sing so wildly : let us go. 



Come ; let ns go : your cheeks are pale; 
But half my life° I leave behind : 
Methinks my friend is richly shrined 

But I shall pass ; my work will fail. 

iii 

Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,° 
One set slow bell will seem to toll 
The passing of the sweetest soul 

That ever look'd with human eyes. 

iv 

I hear it now, and o'er and o'er,° 
Eternal greetings to the dead ; 
And " Ave, Ave, Ave,"° said, 

" Adieu, adieu " for evermore. 



IN MEMORIAM 71 

LVIII 

i 

In those sad words° I took farewell : 

Like echoes in sepulchral halls, 

As drop by drop the water falls 
In vaults and catacombs, they fell ; 

ii 

And, falling, idly broke the peace 

Of h'earts that beat from day to day, 
Half-conscious of their dying clay, 

And those cold crypts where they shall cease. 

iii 
The high Muse° answer'd : " Wherefore grieve 

Thy brethren with a fruitless tear ? 

Abide a little longer here. 
And thou shalt take a nobler leave."° 

LIX 

i 

Sorrow, wilt thou live with me° [Cycle II, 

No casual mistress, but a wife, 5"^^"^ ^" 
' . See Intro- 

My bosom-friend and half of life ; duction, 
As I confess it needs must be ; ^ P^ge xxxvii.] 



72 IN ME MORI AM 



Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,° 
Be sometimes lovely like a bride, 
And put thy harsher moods aside,° 

If thou wilt have me wise and good. 

iii 

My centred passion cannot move, 
Nor will it lessen from to-day; 
But I'll have leave at times to play 

As with the creature of my love ; 

iv 

And set thee forth, for thou art mine. 

With so much hope for years to come. 
That, howsoe'er I know thee, some 

Could hardly tell what name were thine. 

LX 



He past ; a soul of nobler tone : 

My spirit loved and loves him yet. 
Like some poor girl whose heart is se* 

On one whose rank exceeds her own. 



IN MEMORIAM 73 



He mixing with his proper sphere, 
She finds the baseness of her lot, 
Half jealous of she knows not what, 

And envying all that meet him there. 

iii 

The little village looks forlorn ; 

She sighs amid her narrow days, 
Moving about the household ways. 

In that dark house where she was born. 

iv 

The foolish neighbours come and go, 

And tease her till the day draws by : 
At night she weeps, " How vain am I ! 

How should he love a thing so low ? " 

LXI 



If, in thy second state sublime,° 

Thy ransom'd reason° change replies 
With all the circle of the wise. 

The perfect flower of human time° • 



74 IN ME MORI AM 



And if thou cast thine eyes below,° 

How dimly character'd and slight,° 
How dwarf d a growth of cold and night, 

How blanch'd with darkness must I grow ! 

iii 
Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore, 

Where thy first form was made a man ; 

I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can 
The soul of Shakspeare love thee more.° 

LXII 



Tho' if an eye that's downward cast ° 

Could make thee somewhat blench or fail. 
Then be my love an idle tale, 

And fading legend of the past ; 



And thou, as one that once declined,® 
When he was little more than boy, 
On some unworthy heart with joy, 

But lives to wed an equal mind ; 



IN MEMORIAM 75 

iii 
And breathes a novel world, the while 

His other passion wholly dies, 

Or in the light of deeper eyes 
Is matter for a flying smile. 

LXIII 



Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven, 

And love in which my hound has part,^ 
Can hang no weight upon my heart 

In its assumptions up to heaven ; 



And I am so much more than these, 

As thou, perchance, art more than I, 
And yet I spare them sympathy, 

And I would set their pains at ease. 

iii 

So mayst thou watch me where I weep, 
As, unto vaster motions bound, 
The circuits of thine orbit round 

A higher height, a deeper deep. 



76 IN MEMORIAM 

LXIV 



Dost thou look back on what hath been, 
As some divinely gifted man, 
Whose life in low estate began 

And on a simple village green ; 



AVho breaks his birth's invidious bar. 

And grasps the skirts of happy chance, 
And breasts the blows of circumstance, 

And grapples with his evil star'" ; 

ill 

Who makes by force his merit known 
And lives to clutch the golden keys,° 
To mould a mighty state's decrees," 

And shape the whisper of the throne j 

iv 

And moving up from high to higher. 

Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope 
The ijillar of a people's hope,° 

The centre of a world's desire ; 



IN ME MORI AM 77 



Yet feels, as in a pensive dream. 

When all his active powers are still, 
A distant dearness in the hill, 

A secret sweetness in the stream. 



The limit of his narrower fate. 

While yet beside its vocal springs 
He play'd at counsellors and kings, 

With one that was his earliest mate ; 

vii 

Who ploughs with pain his native lea 
And reaps the labour of his hands, 
Or in the furrow musing stands ; 

"Does my old friend remember me ? " 

LXV 



Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt ; 

I lull a fancy trouble-tost 

With " Love's too precious to be lost," 
A little grain shall not be spilt." 



78 IN MEMORIAM 



And in that solace can I sing,° 

Till out of painful phases wrought 
There flutters up a happy thought, 

Self-balanced on a lightsome wing : 

iii 

Since we deserved the jiame of friends, 
And thine effect so lives in me, 
A part of mine may live in thee 

And move thee on to noble ends. 

LXVI 



You thought my heart too far diseased' 
You wonder when my fancies play 
To find me gay among the gay. 

Like one with any trifle pleased. 



The shade by which my life was crost, 
Which makes a desert in the mind, 
Has made me kindly with my kind, 

And like to him whose sight is lost ; 



IN ME MO a I AM 79 



Whose feet are guided thro' the land, 

Whose jest among his friends is free, 
Who takes the children on his knee. 

And winds their curls about his hand : 

iv 
He plays with threads," he beats his chair 

For pastime, dreaming of the sky ; 

His inner day can never die. 
His night of loss is always there. 

LXVII 



When on my bed the moonlight falls, 
I know that in thy place of rest 
By that broad water of the west,° 

There comes a glory on the walls ; 



Thy marble bright in dark appears, 
As slowly steals a silver flame 
Along the letters of thy name. 

And o'er the number. of thy years. 



80 IN MEMORIAM 

iii 
The mystic glory swims away ; 

From off my bed the moonlight dies; 

And closing eaves of wearied eyes° 
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray : 

iv 
And then I know the mist is drawn 
A lucid veil from coast to coast, 
An.d in the dark church like a ghost 
Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn. 

LXVIII 

i 
When" in the down I sink my liead, 

Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my 

breath ; 
Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not 
Death,° 
Nor can I dream of thee as dead : 

ii 

I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn, ° 

When all our path was fresh with dew,° 
And all the bugle breezes blew 

Eeveillee to the breaking morn. 



IN ME MORI AM 81 

iii 

But what is this ? I turn about,° 
I find a trouble in thine eye, 
Which makes me sad I know not why, 

Nor can my dream resolve the doubt° : 

iv 
But ere the lark hath left the lea 

I wake, and I discern the truth ; 

It is the trouble of my youth 
That foolish sleep transfers to thee. 



LXIX 



I dream'd there would be Spring no more, 
That Nature's ancient power was lost : 
The streets were black with smoke and frost. 

They chatter'd trifles at the door : 

ii 

I wander'd from the noisy town, 

I found a wood with thorny boughs : 
I took the thorns to bind my brows, 

I wore them like a civic crown: 



82 IN MEMORIAM 



I met with scoffs, I met with scorns° 

From youth and babe and hoary hairs : 
They call'd me in the public squares 

The fool that wears a crown of thorns : 

iv 
They call'd me fool, they calPd me child : 

I found an angel of the night° ; 

The voice was low, the look was bright ; 
He look'd upon my crown and smiled : 



He reach'd the glory of a hand, 

That seem'd to touch it into leaf : 
The voice was not the voice of grief, 

The words were hard to understand. 

LXX 



I CANNOT see the features right, 

When on the gloom I strive to paint 
The face I know ; the hues are faint 

And mix with hollow masks of night ; 



IN ME MOB I AM 83 



Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought, 
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes, 
A hand that points, and palled° shapes 

In shadowy thoroughfares of -thought; 

iii 
And crowds that stream from yawning doors, 

And shoals of pucker'd faces drive ; 

Dark bulks that tumble half alive. 
And lazy lengths on boundless shores ; 

iv 

Till all at once beyond the will 
I hear a wizard music roll, 
And thro' a lattice^ on the soul 

Looks thy fair face and makes it still. 

LXXI 

i 

Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance° 
And madness, thou hast forged at last 
A night-long Present of the Past 

In which we went thro' summer France. 



84 



IN MEMORIAM 



11 



Hadst thou such credit" with the soul ? 
Then bring an opiate trebly strong, 
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong*^ 

That so my pleasure may be whole ; 



While now we talk as once we talk'd 

Of men and minds, the dust of change, 
The days that grow to something strange,', 

In walking as of old we walk'd 



Beside the river's wooded reach, 

The fortress, and the mountain ridge. 
The cataract flashing from the bridge. 

The breaker breaking on the beach. ° 

LXXII 



RiSEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, ° 
And howlest, issuing out of night. 
With blasts that blow the poplar white. 

And lash with storm the streaming pane ? 



IN ME MORI AM 85 



Day, when my crown'd estate*^ begun 
To pine in that reverse of doom, 
Which sicken'd every living bloom, 

And blurr'd the splendour of the sim ; 

iii 

Who usherest in the dolorous hour 

W^ith thy quick tears that make the rose 
Pull sideways, and the daisy close 

Her crimson fringes to the shower ; 



IV 

Who might'st have heaved a windless flame 
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play'd 
A chequer-work of beam and shade 

Along the hills, yet look'd the same. 



As wan, as chill, as wild as now ; 

Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime. 
When the dark hand struck down thro' time, 

And canceird° nature's best : but thou, 



IN MEMO RI AM 

vi 

Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows 

Thro' clouds that drench the morning star, 
And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar, 

And sow the sky with flying boughs, 

vii 
And up thy vault with roaring sound 

Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day ; 

Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray. 
And hide thy shame beneath the ground. 

LXXIII 

i 

So many worlds, so much to do. 

So little done, such things to be. 
How know I what had need of thee, 

For thou wert strong as thou wert true ? 

ii 

The fame is qiiench'd that I foresaw, 

The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath : 
I curse not nature, no, nor death ; 

For nothing is that errs from law.° 



IN MEMORIAM 87 

iii 

We pass ; the path that each man trod 
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds : 
What fame is left for human deeds 

In endless age ? It rests with God.° 

iv 
hollow wraith of dying fame,° 

Fade wholly, while the soul exults, 

And self-infolds the large results 
Of force that would have forged a name. 

LXXIV 

i 

As sometimes in a dead man's face,° 

To those that watch it more and more, 
A likeness, hardly seen before, 

Comes out — to some one of his race : 

ii 

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,° 
I see thee what thou art,° and know 
Thy likeness to the wise below. 

Thy kindred with the great of old. 



88 /iV ME MORI AM 

iii 
But there is more than I can see, 
And what I see I leave unsaid, 
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made 
His darkness beautiful with thee. 

LXXV 



I LEAVE thy praises unexpress'd 

In verse that brings myself relief,*^ 
And by the measure of my grief 

I leave thy greatness to be guess'd ; 



What practice howsoe'er expert 

In fitting aptest words to things, 
Or voice the richest-toned that sings, 

Hath power to give° thee as thou wert ? 

iii 

I care not in these fading days 

To raise a cry that lasts not long,° 
And round thee with the breeze of son| 

To stir a little dust of praise. 



IN MEMORIAM 89 



Thy leaf has perish'd in the green, 

And, while we breathe beneath the sun, 
The world which credits what is done 

Is cold to all that might have been. 



So here shall silence guard thy fame ; 
But somewhere, out of human view, 
Whate'er thy hands are set to do 

Is wrought with tumult of acclaim. 

LXXVI 



Take wings of fancy, and ascend,° 
And in a moment set thy face 
Where all the starry heavens of space 

Are sharpen'd to a needle's end° ; 



Take wings of foresight ; lighten thro' 
The secular abyss° to come. 
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb 

Before the mouldering of a yew; 



90 IN ME MORI AM 

iii 

And if the matin songs,° that woke° 
The darkness of our planet, last, 
Thine own shall wither in the vast. 

Ere half the lifetime of an oak. 



Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers 
AVith fifty Mays, thy songs are vain ; 
And what are they when these remain » 

The ruin'd shells of hollow towers ? 

LXXVII 



What hope is here for modern rhyme 
To him, who turns a musing eye 
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie 

Foreshorten'd" in the tract of time ? 



These mortal lullabies of pain° 

May bind a book, may line a box. 
May serve to curl a maiden's locks ; 

Or when a thousand moons shall wane 



IN MEMORIAM 91 



A man upon a stall may find, 

And, passing, turn the page that tells 
A grief, then changed to something else,° 

Sung by a long-forgotten mind. 

iv 
But what of that ? My darken'd ways 

Shall ring with music all the same° ; 

To breathe my loss is more than fame, 
To utter love more sweet than praise. 

LXXVIII 

i 

Again at Christmas did we weave [Cycle ill, 

The holly round the Christmas hearth° ; gee lutro- 
The silent snow possess'd the earth, duction, 

And calmly° fell our Christmas-eve : pagexxxvii. 

ii 

The yule-clog° sparkled keen with frost. 

No wing of wind the region° swept, 

But over all things brooding slept 
The quiet sense of something lost. 



92 IN MEMO RI AM 

iii 
As in the winters left behind, 

Again onr ancient games° had place, 
The mimic picture's breathing grace, 
And dance and song and hoodman-blind. 

iv 
Who show'd a token of distress ? 
No single tear, no mark of pain : 
sorrow, then can sorrow wane ? 
grief, can grief be changed to less ? 



V 



last regret, regret can die° ! 

No — mixt with all this mystic frame,"^ 
Her deep relations are the same, 

But with long use her tears are dry. 

LXXIX 

i 

"More than my brothers are to me,"° — 
Let this not vex thee, noble heart ! 
I know thee of what force thou art 

To hold the costliest love in fee.° 



IN MEMORIAM 93 



But thou and I are one in kind, 

As moulded like in Nature's mint ° ; 
And hill and wood and field did print 

The same sweet forms in either mind. 



For us the same cold streamlet° curl'd 

Thro' all his eddying coves ; the same 
All winds that roam the twilight came 

In whispers of the beauteous world. 



IV 

At one dear knee we proffer'd vows, 

One lesson from one book° we learn'd, 
Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd 

To black and brown on kindred brows. 



And so my wealth resembles thine, 
But he was rich where I was poor, 
And he supplied my want the more 

As his unlikeness fitted mine. 



IN ME MORI AM 
LXXX 

i 

If any vague desire should rise, 

That holy Death ere Arthur died 
Had moved me kindly from his side, 

And dropt the dust on tearless eyes ; 



Then fancy shapes, as fancy can. 

The grief my loss in him had wrought, 
A grief as deep as life or thought, 

But stay'd in peace with God and man. 

iii 
I make a picture in the brain ; 

I hear the sentence that he speaks ; 

He bears the burthen of the weeks 
But turns his burthen into gain. 

iv ' 
His credit° thus shall set me free; 

And, influence-rich to soothe and save. 
Unused example from the grave 
Beach out dead hands to comfort me. 



IN MEMO RI AM 

LXXXI 

i 
Could I have said while he was here, 

" My love shall now no further range ; 

There cannot come a mellower change. 
For now is love mature in ear." 

ii 

Love, then, had hope of richer store : 
What end is here to my complaint ? 
This haunting whisper makes me faint, 

" More years had made me love thee more." 

iii 

But Death returns an answer sweet : 

" My sudden frost was sudden gain. 
And gave all ripeness to the grain. 

It might have drawn from after-heat." 

LXXXII 

i 
I WAGE not any feud with Death 

For changes wrought on form and face ; 

No lower life that earth's embrace 
May breed with him, can fright my faith. ° 



96 IN ME MO EI A 31 



Eternal process moving on, 

From state to state° the spirit walks ; 

And these are but the shattered stalks, 
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.° 

iii 

Nor blame I Death, because he bare 
The use of virtue out of earth : 
I know transplanted human worth 

Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. 

iv 
For this alone on Death I wreak 

The wrath that garners° in my heart ; 

He put our lives so far apart 
We cannot hear each other speak.° 

LXXXIII 



Dip down upon the northern shore, 
sweet new-year delaying long; 
Thou doest expectant nature wrong 

Delaying long, delay no more. 



IN ME MORI AM 97 



What stays thee from the clouded noons, 
Thy sweetness from its proper place ? 
Can trouble live with April days, 

Or sadness in the summer moons ? 

iii 

Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, 
The little speedwell's darling blue, 
Deep tulips dash'd° with fiery dew. 

Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.° 

iv 
thou, new-year, delaying long, 

Delayest the sorrow in my blood, 

That longs to burst a frozen bud 

And flood a fresher throat with song.° 

LXXXIV 



When I contemplate" all alone 

The life that had been thine below. 
And fix my thoughts on all the glow 

To which thy crescent would have grown ; 

H 



IN ME MORI AM 



I see thee sitting crown'd with good, 
A central warmth diffusing bliss 
In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss, 

On all the branches of thy blood; 

iii 

Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine ; 
For now the day was drawing on. 
When thou should'st link thy life with one 

Of mine own house,° and boys of thine 

iv 

Had babbled " Uncle " on my knee ; 
But that remorseless iron hour 
Made cypress of her orange flower,° 

Despair of Hope, and earth of thee. 



I seem to meet their least desire, 

To clap their cheeks, to call them mine. 

I see their unborn faces shine 
Beside the never-lighted fire. 



IN MEMORIAM 99 

vi 

I see myself an honour'd guest, 

Thy partner in the flowery walk 

Of letters, genial table-talk, 
Or deep dispute, and graceful jest; 

vii 

While now thy prosperous labour fills 
The lips of men with honest praise, 
And sun by sun the happy days 

Descend below the golden hills 

viii 

With promise of a morn as fair ; 

And all the train of bounteous hours 
Conduct by paths of growing powers, 

To reverence a,nd the silver hair ; 



IX 

Till slowly worn her earthly robe,° 

Her lavish mission richly wrought. 
Leaving great legacies of thought, 

Thy spirit should fail from off the globe 



100 IN MEMORIAM 

X 

What time mine own might also flee, 

As link'd with thine in love and fate, 
And, hovering o'er the dolorous strait 

To the other shore, involved in thee, 

xi 
Arrive" at last the blessed goal, 

And He that died in Holy Land 
Would reach us out the shining hand, 
And take us as a single soul. 

xii 

What reed was that on which I leant ? 
Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake 
The old bitterness" again, and break 

The low beginnings of content." 

LXXXV 



This truth came borne with bier and pall, 
I felt it, when I sorrow'd most, 
'Tis better to have loved and lost," 

Than never to have loved at all 



IN ME MORI AM 101 

ii 

true in word, and tried in deed,° 
Demanding, so to bring relief 
To this which is our common grief, 

What kind of life is that I lead ; 

iii 

And whether trust in things above 

Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd ; 
And whether love for him have drain'd 

My capabilities of love ; 



Your words have virtue such as draws 
A faithful answer from the breast. 
Thro' light reproaches, half exprest 

And loyal unto kindly laws. 



My blood an even tenor kept,° 

Till on mine ear this message falls, 
That in Vienna's fatal walls 

God's finger touch'd him, and he slept. ° 



102 IN MEMORIAM 



VI 



The great Intelligences fair° 

That range° above our mortal state, 
In circle round the blessed gate, 

Received and gave him welcome there ; 

vii 

And led him thro' the blissful climes, 

And show'd him in the fountain fresh 
All knowledge that the sons of flesh 

Shall gather in the cycled times. 



viu 

But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim, 

Whose life, whose thoughts were little 

worth, 
To wander on a darken'd earth, 

Where all things round me breathed of him/ 



IX 

friendship, equal-poised control, ° 

heart, with kindliest motion warm, 
sacred essence, other form, 

solemn ghost, crowned° soul ! 



IN MEMORIAM 103 



Yet none could better know than I, 
How much of act at human hands 
The sense of human will demands 

By which we dare to live or die. 

xi 

Whatever way my days decline, 
I felt and feel, tho' left alone, 
His being working in my own, 

The footsteps of his life in mine ; 



A life that all the Muses deck'd 

With gifts of grace, that might express 
All-comprehensive tenderness. 

All-subtilising intellect : 



Xlll 

And so my passion hath not swerved 
To works of weakness, but I find 
An image comforting the mind. 

And in my grief a strength reserved. 



104 IN ME MORI AM 



XIV 



Likewise the imaginative woe, 

That loved to handle spiritual strife, 
Diffused the shock thro' all my life, 

But in the present broke the blow. 



XV 



My pulses therefore beat again 

For other friends that once I met°; 
Nor can it suit me to forget 

The mighty hopes that make us men.° 

xvi 

I woo your love : I count it crime 
To mourn for any overmuch ; 
I, the divided half of such 

A friendship as had master'd Time° ; 

xvii 

Which masters Time indeed, and is 
Eternal, separate from fears : 
The all-assuming months and years 

Can take no part away from this : 



IN MEMORIAM 105 

xviii 

But Summer on the steaming floods, 

And Spring that swells the narrow brooks, 
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks, 

That gather in the waning woods. 



And every pulse of wind and wave 

Recalls, in change of light or gloom, 
My old affection of the tomb, 

And my prime passion in the grave : 



XX 

My old affection of the tomb, 

A part of stillness, yearns to speak: 
" Arise, and get thee forth and seek 

A friendship for the years to come. 

xxi 

" I watch thee from the quiet shore ; 

Thy spirit up to mine can reach ; 

But in dear words of human speech 
We two communicate no more." ° 



106 IN MEMORIAM 

xxii 

And I, *'Can clouds of nature stain 
The starry clearness of the free°? 
How is it ? Canst thou feel for me 

Some painless sympathy with pain ? " ° 

xxiii 

And lightly does the whisper fall ; 

" 'Tis hard for thee to fathom this ; 

I triumph in conclusive bliss, 
And that serene result of all." ° 

xxiv 

So hold I commerce with the dead° ; 

Or so methinks the dead would say ; 

Or so shall grief with symbols play 
And pining life be fancy-fed. 

xxv 

Now looking to some settled end, 

That these things pass, and I shall prove 
A meeting someivhere, love with love, 

I crave your pardon, my friend ; 



IN MEMO RI AM 107 



If not so fresh, with love as true, 
I, clasping brother-hands, aver 
I could not, if I would, transfer 

The whole I felt for him to you. 



xxvii 



For which be they that hold apart 

The promise of the golden hours°? 
First love, first friendship, equal powers, 

That marry with the virgin heart. 



Still mine, that cannot but deplore, 
That beats within a lonely place, 
That yet remembers his embrace. 

But at his footstep leaps no more, 

xxix 

My heart, tho' widow'd,° may not rest 
Quiet in the love of what is gone, 
But seeks to beat in time with one 

That warms another living breast. 



108 IN MEMORIAM 

XXX 

Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring,° 
Knowing the primrose yet is dear, 
The primrose of the later year, 

As not unlike to that of Spring. 

LXXXVI 



Sweet after showers, ambrosial air. 

That rollest from the gorgeous gloom 
Of evening over brake and bloom 

And meadow, slowly breathing bare° 

ii 

The round of space, and rapt below 
Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood, 
And shadowing down the horned° flood 

In ripples, fan° my brows and blow 

iii 
The fever from my cheek, and sigh 

The full new life that feeds thy breath 
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and 
Death, 
111 brethren, let the fancy fly 



IN ME MORI AM 109 

iv 
From belt to belt of crimson seas 

On leagues of odour streaming far, 

To where in yonder orient star 
A hundred spirits whisper " Peace." 

LXXXVII 

i 
I PAST beside the reverend walls° 

In which of old I wore the gown ; 

I roved at random thro' the town, 
And saw the tumult of the halls ; 



And heard once more in college fanes° 

The storm their high-built organs make, 
And thunder-music, rolling, shake 

The prophet blazon'd on the panes ; 

iii 

And caught once more the distant shout. 
The measured pulse of racing oars 
Among the willows ; paced the shores 

And many a bridge, and all about 



110 IN ME MORI AM 



The same gray flats again, and felt 

The same, but not the same ; and last 
Up that long walk of limes I past 

To see the rooms in which he dwelt. 



Another name was on the door : 

I linger'd; all within was noise 

Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys 

That crash'd the glass and beat the floor ° ; 

vi 

Where once we held debate, a band° 

Of youthful friends, on mind and art. 
And labour, and the changing mart, 

And all the framework of the land ; 



When one would aim an arrow fair. 

But send it slackly from the string ; 
And one would pierce an outer ring, 

And one an inner, here and there ; 



IN MEMORIAM 111 



And last the master-bowman, he, 

Would cleave the mark. A willing ear 
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear° 

The rapt oration flowing free 

ix 

From point to point, with power and grace 
And music in the bounds of law, 
To those conclusions when we saw 

The God within him light his face,° 



And seem to lift the form, and glow 
In azure orbits heavenly-wise ; 
And over those ethereal eyes 

The bar of Michael Angelo.° 

LXXXVIII 

i 

Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, 
Eings Eden thro' the budded quicks,^ 
tell me where the senses mix, 

tell me where the passions meet,° 



IN MEMORIAM 



Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ 
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,° 
And in the midmost heart of grief ° 

Thy passion clasps a secret joy : 

iii 
And I — my harp would prelude woe — 

I cannot all" command the strings ; 

The glory of the sum of things^ 
Will flash along the chords and go. 

LXXXIX 



WiTCH-ELMS that counterchange the floor° 
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright ; 
And thou, with all thy breadth and height 

Of foliage, towering sycamore; 

ii 

How often, hither wandering down, 

My Arthur found your shadows fair, 
And shook to all the liberal air 

The dust and din and steam of town: 



LN ME MORI AM 113 



111 



He brought an eye for all he saw ; 

He mixt in all our simple sports ; 

They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts 
And dusty purlieus of the law. 



joy to him in this retreat, 

Immantled in ambrosial dark, 
To drink the cooler air, and mark 

The landscape winki*ig thro' the heat : 



sound to rout the brood of cares, 

The sweep of scythe in morning dew, 
The gust that round the garden flew, 

And tumbled half the mellowing pears ! 



VI 

bliss, when all in circle drawn . 

About him, heart and ear were fed 
To hear him, as he lay and read 

The Tuscan poets° on the lawn : 



114 IN ME MORI AM 



Or m the all-golden afternoon 

A guest, or happy sister,° sung, 

Or here she brought the harp and flung 

A ballad to the brightening moon : 

viii 

Nor less it pleased in livelier moods, 
Beyond the bounding hiir to stray, 
And break the livelong summer day 

With banquet in the dtstant woods ; 

ix 

Whereat we glanced from theme to theme, 
Discuss'd the books to love or hate. 
Or touch'd the changes of the state, 

Or threaded some Socratic dream ; 



But if I praised the busy town. 

He loved to rail against it still,° 
For " ground in yonder social mill 

We rub each other's angles down. 



IN MEMORIAM 115 

xi* 

" And merge " he said " in form and gloss 
The picturesque of man and man." 
We talk'd : the stream beneath us ran, 

The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss, 

xii 
Or cooPd within the glooming wave ; 

And last, returning from afar, 

Before the crimson-circled star° 
Had fall'n into her father's grave," 

xiii 

And brushing ankle-deep in flowers. 

We heard behind the woodbine veil 
The milk that bubbled in the pail, 

And buzzings of the honied hours. 



XC 



He tasted love with half his mind, 

Nor ever drank the inviolate spring 
Where nighest heaven, who first could fling 

This bitter seed among mankind ; 



116 IN ME MORI AM 



That could the dead, whose dying eyes° 

Were closed with wail, resume their life, 
They would but find in child and wife° 

An iron welcome when they rise : 



111 

'Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine. 
To pledge them with a kindly tear. 
To talk them o'er, to wish them here, 

To count their memories half divine ; 



IV 

But if they came who past away, 

Behold their brides in other hands ; 
The hard heir strides about their lands,' 

And will not yield them for a day. 



Yea, tho' their sons were none of these. 

Not less the yet-loved sire would make 
Confusion worse than death,° and shake 

The pillars of domestic peace. 



IN ME MORI AM 117 



Ah dear, bat come'' thou back to me : 

Whatever change the years have vi^rought, 
I find not yet one lonely thought 

That cries against my wish for thee. 

XCI 



When rosy plumelets tuft the larch,° 

And rarely° pipes the mounted thrush ; 
Or underneath the barren bush 

Flits by the sea-blue bird of March° ; 



Come, wear the form by which I know 
Thy spirit in time among thy peers ; 
The hope of unaccomplish'd years 

Be large and lucid round thy brow. 



When summer's hourly-mellowing change 
May breathe, with many roses sweet, 
Upon the thousand waves of wheat, 

That ripple round the lonely grange ; 



IN MEMO RI AM 

iv 

Come : not in watches of the night, 

But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, 
Come, beauteous in thine after form, 

And like a finer light in light.° 

XCII 



If any vision should reveal 

Thy likeness, I might count it vain 
As but the canker of the brain ; 

Yet tho' it spake and made appeal 

ii 

To chances where our lots were cast 
Together in the days behind, 
I might but say, I hear a wind 

Of memory murmuring" the past. 

iii 

Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view 
A fact within the coming year 
And tho' the months, revolving near, 

Should prove the phantom-warning° true, 



IN MEMORIAM 119 



They° might not seem thy prophecies, 
But spiritual presentiments, 
And such refraction of events° 

As often rises ere they rise. 

XCIII 

i 

I SHALL not see thee. Dare I say 
No spirit ever brake the band 
That stays him from the native land 

Where first he walk'd when claspt in clay° ? 



No visual shade of some one lost,° 

But he, the Spirit himself, may come 
Where all the nerve of sense is numb"^ 

Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost. 

iii 

0, therefore from thy sightless^ range 
With gods in unconjectured bliss, 
0, from the distance of the abyss 

Of tenfold-complicated change. 



IN MEMO RI AM 

iv 
Descend, and touch, and enter ; hear 

The wish too strong for words to name ; 

That in this blindness of the frame 
My Ghost may feel that thine is near. 

XCIV 



How pure at heart and sound in head, 

With what divine affections bold 

Should be the man whose thought would hold 
An hour's communion with the dead. 

ii 

In vain shalt thou, or any, call 

The spirits from their golden day, 
Except,° like them, thou too canst say, 

My spirit is at peace with all. 

iii 
They haunt the silence of the breast. 

Imaginations calm and fair, 

The memory like a cloudless air, 
The conscience as a sea at rest : 



IN MEMORIAM 121 

iv 
But when the heart is full of din, 

And doubt beside the portal waits, 

They can but listen at the gates. 
And hear the household jar within. 

xcv 

i 
By night we linger'd on the lawn, 

For underfoot the herb was dry ; 

And genial warmth ; and o'er the sky 
The silvery haze of summer drawn ; 



And calm that let the tapers burn 

Unwavering : not a cricket chirr'd : 
The brook alone far-off was heard, 

And on the board the fluttering urn : 

iii 

And bats went round in fragrant skies. 
And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes° 
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes 

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes ; 



IN MEMORIAM 



IV 



While now we sang old songs that peal'd 

From knoll to knoll, where, couch'd at ease,° 
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 

Laid their dark arms about the lield.° 



But when those others, one by one,° 

Withdrew themselves from me and night, 
And in the house light after light 

Went out, and I was all alone, 



A hunger seized my heart ; I read 

Of that glad year which once had been. 

In those fall'n leaves which kept their green. 

The noble letters of the dead : 



vu 

And strangely on the silence broke 

The silent-speaking words, and strange 
Was love's dumb cry defying change 

To test his worth 5 and strangely spoke 



IN MEMORIAM 123 



Vlll 



The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell° 

On doubts that drive the coward back,° 
And keen thro' wordy snares to track 

Suggestion to her inmost cell. 



IX 



So word by word, and line by line. 

The dead man touch' d me from the past, 
And all at once it seem'd at last 

The living soul was flash'd on mine,° 



And mine in this was wound, and whirPd 
About empyreal heights of thought. 
And came on that which is,° and caught 

The deep pulsations of the world, 

xi 

Ionian music measuring out 

The steps of Time — the shocks of Chance 
The blows of Death. At length my trance"" 

Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. 



IN ME MORI AM 

xii 

Vague words ! but ah, how hard to frame 
In matter-moulded forms of speech, 
Or ev'n for intellect to reach 

Thro' memory that which I became : 

xiii 

Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd° 

The knolls once more where, couch'd at ease,' 
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 

Laid their dark arms about the field: 

xiv 

And suck'd from out the distant gloom 
A breeze began to tremble o'er 
The large leaves of the sycamore, 

And fluctuate all the still perfume, 



XV 

And gathering freshlier° overhead, 

Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung 
The heavy-folded rose, and flung 

The lilies to and fro, and said 



IN ME MORI AM 125 

xvi 

" The dawn, the dawn," and died away° ; 
And East and West, without a breath, 
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, 

To broaden into boundless day. 

XCVI 



You say, but with no touch of scorn, 

Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes 
Are tender over drowning flies, 

You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. ° 

ii 

I know not : one indeed I knew° 

In many a subtle question versed, 
Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first, 

But ever strove to make it true : 

iii 
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 

At last he beat his music out. 

There lives more faith in honest doubt,° 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 



126 IN MEMORIAM 

\v 

He fought his doubts and gather'd strength," 
He would not make his judgment blind, 
He faced the spectres of the mind 

And laid them : thus he came at length 



To find a stronger faith his own ; 

And Power was with him in the night,° 
Which makes the darkness and the light, 

And dwells not in the light alone, 

vi 

But in the darkness and the cloud,° 
As over Sinai's peaks of old. 
While Israel made their gods of gold. 

Altho' the trumpet blew so loud. 

XCVII 

i 

My love° has talk'd with rocks and trees ; 
He finds on misty mountain-ground" 
His own vast shadow glory-crown'd ; 

He sees himself in all he sees. 



IN MEMORIAM 127 



Two partners of a married life — 

I look'd on these and thought of thee 
In vastness and in mystery, 

And of my spirit as of a wife. 

iii 

These two — they dwelt with eye on eye, 
Their hearts of old have beat in tnne, 
Their meetings made December June, 

Their every parting was to die. 



IV 

Their love has never past away ; 
The days she never can forget 
Are earnest that he loves her yet, 

Whate'er the faithless people say. 



Her life is lone, he sits apart, 

He loves her yet, she will not weep, 
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep 

He seems to slight her simple heart. 



128 IN ME MORI AM 

vi 

He tlirids the labyrinth of the mind, 
He reads the secret of the star,° 
He seems so near and yet so far,° 

He looks so cold : she thinks him kind. 



She keeps the gift of years before, 
A wither'd violet is her bliss : 
She knows not what his greatness isj 

For that, for all, she loves him more. 

viii 

For him she plays, to him she sings 
Of early faith and plighted vows ; 
She knows but matters of the house, 

And he, he knows a thousand things. 

ix 

Her faith is fixt and cannot move. 

She darkly feels him great and wise,° 
She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 

''I cannot understand: I love.°" 



IN MEMORIAM 129 

XCVIII 

i 

You leave us : you will see the Rhine, 
And those fair hills I sail'd below, 
When I was there with him° ; and go 

By summer belts of wheat and vine 

ii 

To where he breathed his latest breath,° 
That City. All her splendour seems 
No livelier than the wisp that gleams 

On Lethe in the eyes of Death. 

iii 

Let her great Danube rolling' fair 

Enwind her isles, unmark'd of me: 
I have not seen, I will not see° 

Vienna ; rather dream that there, 

iv 

A treble darkness, Evil haunts 

The birth, the bridal ; friend from friend 

Is oftener parted, fathers bend 
Above more graves, a thousand wants 

K 



IN ME MORI AM 



Gnarr° at the heels of men, and prey 

By each cold hearth, and sadness flings 
Her shadow on the blaze of kings : 

And yet myself have heard him say, 



VI 

That not in any mother town° 

With statelier progress to and fro 
The double tides of chariots flow 

By park and suburb under brown 

vii 

Of lustier leaves ; nor more content, 
He told me, lives in any crowd. 
When all is gay with lamps, and loud 

With sport and song, in booth and tent, 

viii 

Imperial halls, or oj^en plain ; 

And wheels the circled dance, and breaks 

The rocket molten into flakes 
Of crimson or in emerald rain. 



IN ME MORI AM 131 

XCIX 



EisEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, [Cycle ill, 

So loud with voices of the birds, Group 2. 

o. ^ • 1 -11 • Pill ^®6 Intro- 

So thick with lo wings of the herds, duction, 

Day, when I lost the flower of men; pagexxxvii.] 



Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red 

On yon swolPn brook that bubbles fast 
By meadows breathing of the past,° 

And woodlands holy° to the dead ; 

iii 

Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves 
A song that slights the coming care, 
And Autumn laying here and there° 

A fiery finger on the leaves ; 



IV 

Who wakenest with thy balmy breath 
To myriads on the genial earth, - 
Memories of bridal, or of birth, 

And unto myriads more, of death. 



IN ME MORI AM 



wheresoever those may be, 

Betwixt the slumber of the poles, ° 
To-day they count as kindred souls ; 

They know me not, but mourn with me. 



1 

I CLIMB the hill : from end to end° 
Of all the landscape underneath, 
I find no place that does not breathe*^ 

Some gracious memory of my friend ; 



No gray old grange, or lonely fold. 

Or low morass and whispering reed, 
Or simple stile from mead to mead, 

Or sheepwalk up the windy wold ; 

iii 
Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw 

That hears the latest linnet° trill. 
Nor quarry trench'd along the hill 
And haunted by the wrangling daw ; 



IN MEMORIAM 133 

iv 

Nor runlet tinkling from the rock ; 
Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves 
To left and right thro' meadowy curves, 

That feed the mothers of the flock ; 



But each has pleased a kindred eye, 
And each reflects a kindlier day ; 
And, leaving" these, to pass away, 

I think once more he seems to die. 



CI 



Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall° sway. 
The tender blossom flutter down. 
Unloved, that beech will gather brown. 

This maple burn itself away° ; 



Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair, 

E-ay round with flames her disk of seed. 
And many a rose-carnation feed 

AVith summer spice the humming air ; 



IN MEMORIAM 



Uuloved, by many a sandy bar 

The brook shall babble down the plain, 
At noon or when the lesser wain° 

Is twisting round the polar star ; 

iv 

Uncared for, gird° the windy grove, 

And flood the haunts of hern and crake ; 
Or into silver arrows break 

The sailing moon in creek and cove ; 



Till from the garden and the wild 

A fresh association blow. 

And year by year the landscape grow 
Familiar to the stranger's child ; 

vi 

As year by year the labourer tills 

His wonted glebe, or lops the glades •, 
And year by year our memory fades 

From all the circle of the hills. 



IN MEMORIAM 135 

CII 



We leave the well-beloved place 

Where first we gazed upon the sky ; 
The roofs, that heard our earliest cry, 

Will shelter one of the stranger race. 



We go, but ere we go from home, 

As down the garden-walks I move, 
Two spirits of a diverse love° 

Contend for loving masterdom. 

iii 

One whispers, " Here thy boyhood sung 
Long since its matin song,° and heard 
The low love-language of the bird 

In native hazels tassel-hung. 

iv 

The other answers, " Yea, but here 

Thy feet have stray'd in after hours 
With thy lost friend among the bowers, 

And this hath made them trebly dear." 



136 IN MEMORIAM 



These two have striven half the day, 

And each prefers his separate claim, 
Poor rivals in a losing game, 

That will not yield each other way. 



I turn to go : my feet are set 

To leave the pleasant fields and farms ; 

They° mix in one another's arms 
To one pure image of regret. 

cm 



On that last night before we went 

From out the doors where I was bred, 
I dream'd a vision° of the dead. 

Which left my after-morn content. 

ii 

Methought T dwelt within a hall,° 

And maidens° with me : distant hills 
From hidden summits^ fed with rills 

A river° sliding by the wall. 



IN MEMORIAM 137 

iii 

The hall with harp and carol rang. 

They sang of what is wise and good 
And graceful. In the centre stood 

A statue veil'd, to which they sang ; 

iv 

And which, tho' veil'd, was known to me, 
The shape of him I loved, and love 
For ever : then flew in a dove° 

And brought a summons from the sea° : 



And when they learnt that I must go° 

They wept and wail'd, but led the way 
To where a little shallop lay 

At anchor in the flood below : 



VI 

And on by many a level mead. 

And shadowing bluff that made the banks, 
We glided winding under ranks 

Of iris, and the golden reed ; 



138 IN MEMORIAM 

vii 

And still as vaster grew the shore° 

And roll'd the floods in grander space, 
The maidens gather'd strength and grace 

And presence, lordlier than before ; 



And I myself, who sat apart° 

And watch'd them, wax'd in every limb : 

I felt the thews of Anakim,° 
The pulses of a Titan's heart° ; 



As one would sing the death of war, 
And one would chant the history 
Of that great race, which is to be,' 

And one the shaping of a star ; 



Until the forward-creeping tides° 
Began to foam, and we to draw 
'Erom deep to deep, to where we saw 
A great ship lift her shining sides. 



IN MEMORIAM 139 

xi 

The man we loved was there on deck, 
But thrice as large as man he bent 
To greet us. Up the side I went, 

And fell in silence on his neck : 



Xll 

Whereat those maidens with one mind 

Bewail'd their lot ; I did them wrong : 

" AVe served thee here," they said, " so lonj 

And wilt thou leave us now behind ? " 



Xlll 

So rapt° I was, they could not win 
An answer from my lips, but he 
Replying, " Enter likewise ye° 

And go with us : " they enter'd in. 

xiv 

And while the wind began to sweep 
A music out of sheet and shroud. 
We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud 

That landlike slept along the deep. 



140 IN MEMORIAM 

CIV 

i 

[Cycle IV. The time draws near the birth of Christ°; 
See Intro- The mooii is hid, the night is still ; 

page xxxvii.] ^ single church° below the hill 

Is pealing, folded in the mist. 

ii 

A single peal of bells below. 

That wakens at this hour of rest 
A single murmur in the breast, 

That these are not the bells I know. 

iii 

Like strangers' voices here they sound. 
In lands where not a memory strays, 
Nor landmark breathes of other days,° 

But all is new unhallow'd ground. ° 

CV 



To-night ungather'd let us leave 
This laurel, let this holly stand : 
We live within the stranger's land, 

And strangely falls our Christmas-eve. 



IN MEMORIAM 141 

ii 

Our father's dust is left alone 

And silent under other snows : 

There in due time the woodbine blows, 

The violet comes, but we are gone. 



Ill 

No more shall wayward grief abuse° 

The genial hour with mask and mime ; 
For change of place, like growth of time, 

Has broke the bond of dying use.° 



IV 

Let cares that petty shadows cast, 

By which our lives are chiefly proved, 
A little spare the night I loved. 

And hold it solemn to the past. 



But let no footstep beat the floor,° 

Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm ; 
For who would keep an ancient form 

Thro' which the spirit breathes no more ? 



142 IN MEMORIAM 

vi 
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast ; 

Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown; 

No dance, no motion, save alone 
What lightens in the lucid east 



Of rising worlds" by yonder wood. 

Long sleeps the summer in the seed ; 

Kun out your measured arcs, and lead 
The closing cycle° rich in good. 

CVI 



Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
The flying cloud, the frosty light : 
The year is dying in the night ; 

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 



Ring out the old, ring in the new, 

Ring, happy bells, across the snow : 
The year is going, let him go ; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true.° 



IN ME MORI AM 143 

iii 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 
Eor those that here we see no more ; 
Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 

Ring in redress to all mankind. 

iv 

Ring out a slowly dying cause. 

And ancient forms of party strife ; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life, 

With sweeter manners, purer laws. 



Ring out the want, the care, the sin, 

The faithless coldness of the times ; 
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, 

But ring the fuller minstrel in. 



VI 

Ring out false pride in place and blood. 
The civic slander and the spite ; 
Ring in the love of truth and right. 

Ring in the common love of good. 



144 IN MEMO RI AM 

vii 
Eing out old shapes of foul disease ; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold° ; 

Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace." 



Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 
Ring out the darkness of the land. 

Ring in the Christ that is to be.° 

CVII 



It is the day when he was born, 
A bitter day that early sank 
Behind a purple-frosty bank 

Of vapour, leaving night forlorn. 

ii 

The time admits not flowers or leaves 
To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies 
The blast of North and East, and ice 

Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves. 



Ili MEMORIAM 145 

iii 

And bristles all the brakes and thorns 
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs 
Above the wood which grides° and clangs 

Its leafless ribs° and iron horns 

iv 

Together, in the drifts° that pass 

To darken on the rolling brine 

That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine, 
Arrange the board and brim the glass ; 



Bring in great logs and let them lie, 
To make a solid core of heat ; 
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat 

Of all things ev'n as he were by° ; 

vi 

We keep the day. With festal cheer, 
With books and music, surely we 
Will drink to him, whate'er he be,° 

And sing the songs he loved to hear. 

L 



146 IN MEM OBI AM 

CVIII 

i 

I WILL not shut me from my kind, 
And, lest I stiffen into stone, 
I will not eat my heart° alone, 

Nor feed with sighs a passing wind : 



What profit lies in barren faith,° 

And vacant yearning, tho' with might 
To scale the heaven's highest height, 

Or dive below the wells of Death ? 

iii 

What find I in the highest place,° 

But mine own phantom chanting hymns ? 

And on the depths of death there swims 
The reflex of a human face. 

iv 

I'll rather take what fruit may be 
Of sorrow under human skies : 
'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise," 

Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.° 



IN MEMORIAM 14 

CIX 



Heart-affluence in discursive talk° 

From household fountains never dry ; 
The critic clearness of an eye, 

That saw thro' all the Muses' walk : 



Seraphic intellect and force 

To seize and throw the doubts of man ; 

Impassion'd logic, which outran 
The hearer in its fiery course ; 

iii 

High nature amorous of the good, 

Bat touch'd with no ascetic gloom ; 
And passion pure in snowy bloom 

Thro' all the years of April blood ; 

iv 

A love of freedom rarely felt. 
Of freedom in her regal seat 
Of England ; not the schoolboy heat, 

The blind hysterics of the Celt" ; 



148 IN MEMORIAM 



And manhood fused with female grace 
In such a sort, the child would twine 
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine, 

And find his comfort in thy face ; 

vi 

All these have been, and thee mine eyes 
Have look'd on : if they look'd in vain, 
My shame is greater who. remain, 

ISTor let° thy wisdom make me wise. 



CX 



Thy converse drew us with delight, 
The men of rathe° and riper years : 
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears, 

Forgot his weakness in thy sight. 

ii 

On thee the loyal-hearted hung, 

The proud was half disarm 'd of pride. 
Nor cared the serpent at thy side 

To flicker with his double tongue. 



IN ME MORI AM 149 

iii 

The stern were mild when thou wert by,"^ 
The flippant put himself to school 
And heard thee, and the brazen fool 

Was soften'd and he knew not why ; 

iv 
While I, thy nearest, sat apart. 

And felt thy triumph was as mine ; 

And loved them° more, that they were thine, 
The graceful tact, the Christian art ; 



Nor mine the sweetness or the skill, 
But mine the love that will not tire, 
And, born of love, the vague desire 

That spurs an imitative will. 

CXI 



The churl in spirit, up or down 

Along the scale of ranks, thro' all, 
To him who grasps a golden ball," 

By blood a king, at heart a clown ; 



150 IN ME MORI AM 



The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil 

His want in forms for fashion's sake, 
Will let his coltish° nature break 

At seasons thro' the gilded pale : 

ill 

For who can always act ? but he, 

To whom a thousand memories call, 
Kot being less but more than all 

The gentleness he seem'd to be, 

iv 

Best seem'd the thing he was, and join'd 
Each office of the social hour 
To noble manners, as the flower 

And native growth of noble mind ; 



Nor ever narrowness or spite. 
Or villain° fancy fleeting by. 
Drew in° the expression of an eye. 

Where God and Nature met in light° ; 



IN ME MORI AM 151 

vi 

And thus he bore without abuse 

The grand okl name of gentlenum, 
Defamed by every charlatan, 

And soiPd with all ignoble use. 

CXII 



High wisdom° holds my wisdom less, 

That I, who gaze with temperate eyes 
On glorious insufficiencies," 

Set light by narrower perfectness.° 

ii 

But thou, that fillest all the room 
Of all my love, art reason why 
I seem to cast a careless eye 

On souls, the lesser lords of doom. 

iii 

For what wert thou ? some novel power 
Sprang up for ever at a touch, 
And hope could never hope too much, 

Tn watching thee from hour to hour, 



152 IN MU MORI AM 

iv 
Large elements in order brought, 

And tracts of calm from tempest made, 
And world-wide fluctuation sway'd 
In vassal tides that follow'd thought." 

CXIII 

i 

'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise° ; 

Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee 
Which not alone had guided me. 

But served the seasons that may rise; 



For can I doubt, who knew thee keen 
In intellect, with force and skill 
To strive, to fashion, to fulfil — 

I doubt not what thou wouldst have been : 

iii V 

A life in civic action warm, 

A soul on highest mission sent, 
A potent voice of Parliament," 

A pillar steadfast in the storm," 



IN MEMORIAM 153 

iv 

Should licensed boldness gather force, 
Becoming, when the time has birth, 
A lever to uplift the earth 

And roll it in another course, 



With thousand shocks that come and go,° 
With agonies, with energies, 
With overthrowings, and with cries, 

And undulations to and fro. 

CXIV 



Who loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail 
Against her beauty ? May she mix 
With men and prosper ! Who shall fix 

Her pillars" ? Let her work prevail. 

ii 

But on her forehead sits a fire : 

She sets her forward countenance 
And leaps into the future chance, 

Submitting all things to desire. 



154 IN MEMORIAM 

iii 

Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain — 
She cannot fight the fear of death. 
What is she, cut from love and faith, 

But some wild Pallas° from the brain 



Of Demons ? fiery-hot to burst° 

All barriers in her onward race 

For power. Let her know her place ; 

She is the second, not the first. 



A higher hand must make her mild. 
If all be not in vain ; and guide 
Her footsteps, moving side by side 

With wisdom, like the younger child : 



For she is earthly of the mind, 

But W^isdom heavenly of the soul. 
0, friend, who earnest to thy goal 

So early, leaving me behind. 



IN ME MORI AM 155 

vii 

I would the great world grew like thee, 
Who grewest not alone in pow^- 
And knowledge, but by year and hour 

In reverence and in charity. 

cxv 

i 

Now fades the last long streak of snow, 
Now burgeon s° every maze of quick° 
About the flowering squares," and thick 

By ashen roots the violets blow. 

ii 

Now rings the woodland loud and long, 
The distance takes a lovelier hue, 
And drown'd in yonder living blue 

The lark becomes a sightless song.° 

iii 
Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, 

The flocks are whiter down the vale, 

And milkier every milky sail 
On winding stream or distant sea ; 



156 IN MEM OBI AM 

iv 

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives 
In yonder greening gleam, and fly 
The happy birds, that change their sky 

To build and brood ; that live their lives 



From land to land ; and in my breast 
Spring wakens too ; and my regret 
Becomes an April violet. 

And buds and blossoms like the rest. 

CXVI 



Is it, then, regret° for buried time 

That keenlier in sweet April wakes, 
And meets the year, and gives and takes 

The colours of the crescent prime° ? 

ii 

Not all : the songs, the stirring air, 
The life re-orient out of dust. 
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust 

In that which made the world so fair. 



IN MEMORIAM 167 

iii 

Not all regret : the face will shine 

Upon me, while I muse alone ; 

And that dear voice, I once have known, 
Still speak to me of me and mine : 

iv 

Yet less of sorrow lives in me 

For days of happy commune dead; 
Less yearning for the friendship fled, 

Than some strong bond which is to be. 

CXVII 



DAYS and hours, your work is this 
To hold me from my proper place, 
A little while from his embrace, 

For fuller gain of after bliss : 

ii 

That out of distance might ensue 

Desire of nearness doubly sweet ; 
And unto meeting when we meet, 

Delight a hundredfold accrue, 



168 IN ME MORI AM 



For every grain of sand that runSj° 

And every span of shade that steals, 
And every kiss of toothed° wheels, 

And all the courses of the suns. 

CXVIII 

i 
Contemplate all this work of Time, 

The giant labouring in his youth ; 

Nor dream of human love and truth, 
As dying Nature's earth and lime ; 



But trust that those we call the dead 
Are breathers of an ampler day 
For ever nobler ends. They say, 

The solid earth whereon we tread 

iii 
In tracts of fluent heat began,° 

And grew to seeming-random forms, 
The seeming prey of cyclic storms, 
Till at the last arose the man ; 



IM ME MORI AM 159 



Who throve and braiich'd from clime to clime, 
The herald of a higher race,° 
And of himself in higher place,° 

If so he type this work of time 



Within himself, from more to more° ; 
Or, crown'd with attributes of woe 
Like glories, move his course, and show 

That life is not as idle ore,° 



VI 

But iron dug from central gloom, 

And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipt in baths of hissing tears, 

And batter'd with the shocks of doom 



Vll 

To shape and use. Arise and fly° 

The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; 
Move upward, working out the beast. 

And let the ape and tiger die. 



160 IJV ME MORI AM 

CXIX 

i 

DooKS, where my heart was used to beat° 
So quickly, not as one that weeps 
I come once more; the city sleeps; 

I smell the meadow in the street ; 

ii 

I hear a chirp of birds ; I see 

Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn 
A light-blue lane of early dawn,° 

And think of early days and thee, 

iii 
And bless thee, for thy lips are bland. 

And bright the friendship of thine eye ; 

And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh 
I take the pressure of thine hand.° 

cxx 

i 

I TRUST I have not wasted breath° : 
I think we are not wholly brain. 
Magnetic mockeries^ ; not in vain, 

Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death° 



IN MEMORIAM 161 

ii 

Not only cunning casts in clay : 

Let Science prove we are, and then 
What matters Science unto men, 

At least to me ? I would not stay. 

iii 

Let him, the wiser man who springs° 
Hereafter, up from childhood shape 
His action like the greater ape, 

But I was horn to other things. 

CXXI 



Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun 

And ready, thou, to die with him, 
Thou watchest all things ever dim 

And dimmer, and a glory done : 

ii 
The team is loosen' d from the wain, 

The boat is drawn upon the shore ; 

Thou listenest to the closing door, 
And life is darken'd in the brain. 



IN ME MORI AM 



Bright Phosx3hor,° fresher for the night, 

By thee the world's great work is heard 
Beginning, and the wakeful bird ; 

Behind thee comes the greater light : 

iv 
The market boat is on the stream, 

And voices hail it from the brink ; 

Thou hear'st the village hammer clink, 
And see'st the moving of the team. 



Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name° 
For what is one, the first, the last. 
Thou, like my present and my past, 

Thy place is changed ; thou art the same. 

CXXII 



Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then, 
While I rose up against my doom,° 
And 3^earn'd to burst the folded gloom. 

To bare the eternal Heavens again. 



IN MEMORIAM 163 



To feel once more, in placid awe, 
The strong imagination roll 
A sphere of stars about my soul, 

In all her motion one with law : 



111 

If thou wert with me, and the grave 
Divide us not, be with me now, 
And enter in at breast and brow. 

Till all my blood, a fuller wave. 



IV 

Be quicken'd with a livelier breath. 
And like an inconsiderate boy. 
As in the former flash of joy,° 

I slip the thoughts of life and death ; 



And all the breeze of Fancy blows. 

And every dew-drop paints a bow,° 
The wizard lightnings deeply glow. 

And every thought breaks out a rose. 



IN MEMORIAM 



CXXIII 



1 
There rolls the deep where grew the tree. 

earth, what changes hast thou seen ! 

There where the long street roars, hath been 
The stillness of the central sea. 

ii 
The hills are shadows, and they flow° 

From form to form, and nothing stands ; 

They melt like mist, the solid lands, 
Like clouds they shape themselves and go. 

iii 
But in my spirit will I dwell,° 

And dream my dream, and hold it true ; 

For tho' my lips may breathe adieu, 
I cannot think the thing farewell. 

CXXIV 

i 
That which we dare invoke to bless° ; 

Our dearest faith ; our ghastliest doubt ; 

He, They, One, All ; within, without ; 
The Power in darkness whom we guess° ; 



IN MEMORIAM 165 

ii 

I found Him not in world or sun,° 

Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye ; 

Nor thro' the questions men may try, 
The petty cobwebs° we have spun : 



If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 
I heard a voice " believe no more " 
And heard an ever-breaking shore 

That tumbled in the Godless deep ; 

iv 

A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And like a man in wrath the heart 

Stood up and answer'd ^'I have felt."° 



No, like a child in doubt and fear^ 



But that blind clamour° made me wise 
Then was I as a child that cries, 
But, crying, knows his father near ; 



IN ME MORI AM 

vi 
And what I am beheld again 

What is,° and no man understands ; 

And out of darkness came the hands^ 
That reach thro' nature, moulding men. 

cxxv 



Whatever I have said or sung, 

Some bitter notes my harp would give,° 
Yea, tho' there often seem'd to live 

A contradiction on the tongue, 

ii 
Yet Hope had never lost her youth ; 

She did but look through dimmer eyes ; 

Or Love but play'd with gracious lies,^ 
Because he felt so fix'd in truth : 

iii 

And if the song were full of care, 

He° breathed the spirit of the song; 
And if the words were sweet and strong 

He set his royal° signet there ; 



IN MEMORIAM Wi 

iv 

Abiding with me till I sail 

To seek thee on the mystic deeps, 
And this electric force, that keeps 

A thousand pulses dancing, fail. 

CXXVI 



Love is and was my Lord and King,° 
And in his presence 1 attend 
To hear the tidings of my friend, 

Which every hour his couriers bring. 



Love is and was my King and Lord, 
And will be, tho' as yet I keep 
Within his court on earth, and sleep 

Encompass'd by his faithful guard, 

iii 

And hear at times a sentinel 

Who moves about from place to place. 
And whispers to the worlds of space, 

In the deep night, that all is well.'^ 



IN MEMORIAM 
CXXVII 

i 
And all is well, tho' faith and form 

Be sunder'd in the night of fear ; 

Well roars the storm to those that hear 
A deeper voice across the storm, 



Proclaiming social truth shall spread, 
And justice, ev'n tho' thrice again 
The red fool-fury of the Seine° 

Should pile her barricades with dead. 

iii 

But ill for him that wears a crown,° 
And him, the lazar, in his rags : 
They tremble, the sustaining crags ; 

The spires of ice are toppled down, 

iv 

And molten up, and roar in flood ; 

The fortress crashes from on high, 
The brute earth lightens to the sky, 

And the great ^on sinks in blood. 



IN MEMORIAM 169 



And compass'd by the fires of Hell ; 

While thou, dear spirit, happy star,^ 
O'erlook'st the tumult from afar, 

And smilest, knowing all is well. 

CXXVIII 



The love that rose on stronger wings, 
Unpalsied when he met with Death, 
Is comrade of the lesser faith 

That sees the course of human things. 



No doubt vast eddies in the flood 

Of onward time shall yet be made, 
And throned° races may degrade ; 

Yet ye mysteries of good, 

iii 

Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear, 
If all your office had to do 
With old results that look like new ; 

If this were all your mission here, 



IN MEMORIAM 

iv 

To draw, to sheathe a useless sword, 

To fool the crowd with glorious lies,' 
To cleave a creed in sects and cries, 

To change the bearing of a word, 

V 

To shift an arbitrary power. 

To cramp the student at his desk, 
To make old bareness picturesque 

And tuft with grass a feudal tower ; 

vi 

Why then my scorn might well descend 
On you and yours. I see in part° 
That all, as in some piece of art. 

Is toil cooperant to an end. 

CXXIX 

i 
De^r friend, far off, my lost desire. 

So far, so near in woe and weal°; 

loved the most, when most I feel 
There is a lower and a higher ; 



IJV MEMORIAM 171 



Known and unknown ; human, divine; 

Sweet human hand and lips and eye ; 

Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, 
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine ; 

iii 
Strange friend, past, present, and to be ; 

Loved deeplier, darklier understood^ ; 

Behold, I dream a dream of good. 
And mingle all the world with thee.° 

cxxx 



Thy voice is on the rolling air° ; 

I hear thee where the waters run ; 

Thou standest in the rising sun, 
And in the setting thou art fair. 

ii 

What art thou then ? I cannot guess ; 
But tho' I seem in star and flower 
To feel thee some diffusive power, 

I do not therefore love thee less : 



172 IN ME MORI AM 

iii 
My love involves the love before ; 

My love is vaster passion now ; 

Tho' niix'd with God and Mature thou,° 
I seem to love thee more and more. 

iv 
Far off thou art, but ever nigh° ; 

I have thee still, and I rejoice ; 

I prosper, circled with thy voice ; 
I shall not lose thee tho' I die. 

CXXXI 

i 
LIVING wilF that shalt endure 

When all that seems shall suffer shock, 

Rise in the spiritual rock,° 
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 



That we may lift from out of dust° 
A voice as unto him that hears, 
A cry above the conquer'd years° 

To one that with us works,° and trust, 



JN MEM OBI AM 

iii 

With faith that comes of self-control,° 
The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved, 

And all we flow from, soul in soul. 



1 

TRUE and tried, so well and long,° 
Demand not thou a marriage lay°; 
In that it is thy marriage day 

Is music more than any song. 



Nor have I felt so much of bliss 

Since first he told me that he loved 
A daughter of our house ; nor proved 

Since that dark day° a day like this ; 

iii 

Tho' I since then have number'd o'er 

Some thrice three years : they went and came, 
Remade the blood and changed the frame. 

And yet is love not less, but more ; 



IN MEMORIAM 

iv 

No longer caring to embalm 

In dying songs a dead regret, 
But like a statue solid-set, 

And moidded in colossal calm. 



Regret is dead,° but love is more 

Than in the summers that are flown, 
For I myself with these have grown° 

To something greater than before ; 



VI 

Which makes appear the songs I made 
As echoes out of weaker times, 
As half but idle brawling rhymes, 

The sport of random sun and shade. 



But where is she, the bridal flower, 

That must be made a wife ere noon ? 
She enters, glowing like the moon 

Of Eden on its bridal bower : 



IN ME MORI AM 175 



Vlll 



On me she bends her blissful eyes 

And then on thee ; they meet thy look 
And brighten like the star that shook ° 

Betwixt the palms of paradise. 



IX 



O when her life was yet in bud, 

He too foretold the perfect rose. 

For thee she grew, for thee she grows 

For ever, and as fair as good. 



And thou art worthy ; full of power ; 
As gentle ; liberal-minded, great, 
Consistent ; wearing all that weight' 

Of learning lightly like a flower. 



But now set out : the noon is near, 
And I must give away the bride ; 
She fears not, or with thee beside 

And me behind her, will not fear. 



IN MEMORIAM 

xii 

For I that danced her on my knee,° 

That watch'd her on her nurse's arm, 
That shielded all her life from harm 

At last must part with her to thee ; 

xiii 

Now waiting to be made a wife, 

Her feet, my darling, on the dead° ; 
Their pensive tablets" round her head. 

And the most living words of life 

xiv 

Breathed in her ear. The ring is on, 

The " wilt thou " answer'd, and again 
The " wilt thou " ask'd, till out of twain 

Her sweet " I will " has made you one. 

XV 

Now sign your names, which shall be read, 
Mute symbols of a joyful morn. 
By village eyes as yet unborn ; 

The names are sign'd, and overhead 



IJSf MEMORIAM 177 

xvi 

Begins the clash and clang that tells 
The joy to every wandering breeze ; 
The blind wall rocks, and on the trees 

The dead leaf trembles to the bells. 



xvii 

happy hour, and happier hours 

Await them. Many a merry face 
Salutes them — maidens of the place, 

That pelt us in the porch with flowers. 

xviii 

happy hour, behold the bride 

With him to whom- her hand I gave. 
They leave the porch, they pass the grave 

That has to-day its sunny side. 

xix 

To-day the grave is bright for me, 

For them the light of life increased. 
Who stay to share the morning feast. 

Who rest to-night beside the sea. 

N 



IN MEMO R I AM 
XX 

Let all my genial spirits advance 
To meet and greet a whiter sun ; 
My drooping memory will not shun 

The foaming grape of eastern France. 

xxi 

It circles round, and fancy plays, 

And hearts are warm'd and faces bloom. 
As drinking health to bride and groom 

We wish them store of happy days. 

xxii 

Nor count me all to blame if I 
Conjecture of a stiller guest,° 
Perchance, perchance, among the rest, 

And, tho' in silence, wishing joy. 

xxiii 

But they must go, the time draws on. 

And those white-f avour'd horses wait ; 
They rise, but linger ; it is late ; 

Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone. 



IN MEMORIAM ITU 

xxiv 

A shade falls on us like the dark 

From little cloudlets on the grass, 
But sweeps away as out we pass 

To range the woods, to roam the park, 

XXV 

Discussing how their courtship grew. 
And talk of others that are wed. 
And how she look'd, and what he said, 

And back we come at fall of dew. 

XX vi 

Again the feast, the speech, the glee. 

The shade of passing thought, the wealth 
Of words and wit, the double health, 

The crowning cup, the three-times-three, 

xxvii 

And last the dance ; — till T retire : 

Dumb is that tower which spake so loud, 
And high in heaven the streaming cloud. 

And on the downs a rising fire° : 



180 IN ME MORI AM 

xxviii 

And rise, moon, from yonder down, 
Till over down and over dale 
All night the shining vapour sail 

And pass the silent-lighted town, 

xxix 

The white-faced halls, the glancing rills^ 
And catch at every mountain head. 
And o'er the friths that branch and spread 

Their sleeping silver thro' the hills ; 

XXX 

And touch with shade the bridal doors,- 
With tender gloom the roof, the wall ; 
And breaking let the splendour fair 

To spangle all the happy shores 

xxxi 

By which they rest, and ocean sounds. 
And, star and system rolling past, 
A soul shall draw from out the vast 

And strike his being into bounds, 



IN MEMORIAM 181 



XXXll 



And, moved thro' life of lower phase, 
Eesult in man, be born and think, 
And act and love, a closer link° 

Betwixt ns and the crowning race° 



XXXlll 

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look 

On knowledge ; under whose command 
Ts Earth and Earth's, and in their hand 

Is Nature like an open book° ; 

xxxiv 

No longer half-akin to brute. 

For all we thought and loved and did, 
And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed 

Of what in them is flower and fruit : 



XXXV 

Whereof the man, that with me trod 
This planet, was a noble type 
Appearing ere the times were ripe. 

That friend of mine who lives in God,° 



182 IN MEMORIAM 

xxxvi 

That God, which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event,° 

To which the whole creation moves. 



NOTES 

"N". B. Cf. is used with reference to passages to be examined together, whether 
for likeness, unlikeness, connection of part with part, or for some other reason ; 
B., C, G., P., E., i-efer respectively to the works of Bradle}', Collins, Genung, 
Parsons, and Eolfe, mentioned in the Bibliography; and H. T. refers to the Anno- 
tated Edition of the Poem, edited by Hallam Tennyson. 

Prologue, Heading. Obiit (Lat.) : died, 
i. 1. immortal Love. Cf. 

" Immortal Love, Author of this great frame." 

— George Herbert, Love. (B.) 

Tennyson said that he used "Love" in the same sense as in 
1 John iv. — Memoir, I. 312 n. There is in this prologue a very- 
exquisite blending of the idea of love as in the Biblical quotation 
"God is love" and Tennyson's own love for Hallam. 
1. 2. Cf. 1 Peter i. 8. 
3-4. Cf. 

"Yet for the general purposes of faith 
In Providence, for solace and support, 
We may not doubt that who can best subject 
The will to reason's law, can strictliest live 
And act in that obedience, he shall gain 
The clearest apprehension of those truths 
Which unassisted reason's utmost power 
Is too infirm to reach." 

— Wordsworth, The Excursion, V. 515-522. 
183 



184 NOTES [Prologue 

" For nothing worthy proving can he proven, 
Nor yet disproveu ; wherefore thou he wise, 
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 
And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith." 

— Tennyson, The Ancient Sage. 

4. Cf. LIV. iv. 1-2; LV. v.; CXXXI. ill. 1-2. 
ii. 1. these orbs of light and shade : " Sun and Moon " (H. T.) ; 
but the poet probably meant something more than this, possibly 
the solar system, each planet being half illuminated by the sun, 
and half in darkness. Moreover, as B. points out, he quite possibly 
uses light and shade as symbols respectively of life and death. 
2-4, iii. 2-4. Cf. John i. 3. 
3-4. ... thy foot 

Is on the skull which thou hast made. 
Squires explains this passage thus : " An old legend states that 
Christ's cross was planted in Adam's grave ; and many early 
painters put a skull at the foot of the cross. (Compare Mark xv. 
22.) This thought may have suggested the figure." Parsons has 
the same explanation. It seems likely, however, that skull is here 
the usual symbol of death, and that the foot upon the skull indicates 
that death is subject to Divine Power. Among many scriptural 
references, Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 26. 
iii. 1. Cf. CXXXI. ii. 1-2. 

3. Cf. XXXIV. i. 1-2 ; LVI. iii-vi ; also 

" I feel my immortality o'ersweep 
All pain, all tears, all fears, and peal. 
Like the eternal thunders of the deep. 
Into my ears this truth — ' Thou liv'st forever! ' " 

— Byron, Heaven and Earth, Pt. I. Sc. i. 



Prologue] NOTES 185 

iv. 4. Thus, in the Lord 's Prayer, "Thy will be done," we 
merge our will in God's. 
V. 1-2. Cf. 

" If tired with systems, each in its degree 
Substantial, and all crumbling in their turn, 
Let him build systems of his own, and smile 
At the fond work, demolished with a touch." 

— Wordsworth, The Excursion, IV. 608-606. 

vi. 1. Cf. LIV. iv. 1-2 ; CXXXL iii. 2. 

1-2. Cf. Bomans viii. 24 ; Hebrews xi. 1. 
vii-viii. Cf. XXXIIL i. 1-2 ; XCVI. iv-v. 
vii. 1. Cf. XLIV. i. 2 ; CXVIII. v. 1. 

4. as before : i.e. when faith in God was stronger, 
viii. 1. Cf. LXL ii. 2. 

ix, X, xi. He asks forgiveness for what he considers a crime. 
Cf. V. i. 1-2 ; XLVIII. iii. 3-4 ; LXXXV. xvi. 1-2. 

ix. 8-4. The meaning is that one man may have merit in the eyes 
of another man, but not in the eyes of God. Cf. Psalms xvi. 2-3 ; 
cxliii. 2. 
X. 3. Cf. Epil. XXXV. 4. 

3-4. Cf. CXXX. iii. 3-4. 
xi. 2. Confused wailings of a man whose youth has accomplished 
nothing. 

4. Cf. CIX. vi. 4. 

I. Grief, sanctified by Love, may be transmuted into a good. 
i. 1. I held it truth. Cf. I hold it true, XXVII. iv. 1 ; him 
who sings : Tennyson wrote in 1891, relative to this passage : " I 



186 NOTES [Page 4 

believe I alluded to Goethe. Among his last words were these : 
' Von Aenderungen zu hoheren Aenderungen,' ' from changes to 
higher changes.' " — Memoir^ II. 391. 

2. To one clear harp in divers tones. Professor Sidgwick ex- 
plains this by relating a conversation in which Tennyson placed 
Goethe " foremost among the moderns as a lyric poet," and added 
that he was "consummate in so many different styles." 

— Memoir, II. 391 n. 

3-4. Cf. LV. iv. ; also 

" Victor from vanquish'd issues at the last, 
And overthrower from being overthrown." 

— Tennyson, Gareth and Lynette, 1230-1231. 

St. Augustine wrote : " De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, 
si vitia ipsa calcamus." (" We make for ourselves a ladder of our 
vices, if we tread upon the vices themselves.") 

4. dead selves : ". . . neither our vices nor our calamities ; 
but, rather, our general experiences, which all perish as they 
happen." (G.) 

ii. 4. Cf. LIX. ii. ; CVIII. iv. 3 ; CXIII. i. 1 ; also 

'* Weep, I'll count the tears. 
And each one shall be a bliss 
For thee in after years." 
— Keats, On . . . ("Think not of it, sweet one, so"), 10-12. 

" How many a holy and obsequious tear 
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye. 
As interest of the dead ..." 

— Shakespeare, Sonnet XXXI. (P.) 



Pages 4-5] NOTES 187 

" The liquid drops of tears that you have shed 
Shall come again, transform'd to orient pearl, 
Adv^antaging their loan with interest 
Of ten times double gain of happiness." 
— Shakespeare, Bichard the Third, IV. iv. 321-324. (B.) 

"... the wished day is come at last, 
That shall, for all the paynes and sorrowes past, 
Pay to her usury of long delight," 

— Spenser, Einthalamion, 31-33. 

ill. 1. He means for Love and Grief to support and strengthen 
each other. 

2. I.e. Let the darkness of grief remain unimpaired. 

4. beat the ground. Cf. LXXXVIL v. 4 ; C V. v. 1. B. cites 
Milton's Comus, 143, and B.ora.ce'' s pulsanda tellus ; but perhaps a 
better citation would be pelle humum pedibus, "beat the ground 
with the feet," Catullus, Odes, LXI, 14. 

iv. "Yet it is better to bear the misery of extreme grief than 
that Time should obliterate the sense of loss and deaden the power 
of Love." (H. T.) 

1. Cf. LXXXV. xvi. 4. As the poet gains control of his grief, 
the victor Hours become the conquer'd years. See CXXXI. ii. 3. 

3. Cf. XXVIL iv. 3 ; LXXXV. i. 3. 

II. The gloomy, long-lived, evergreen yew tree, common in 
English cemeteries, is a fitting symbol of his lasting and unvarying 
grief. Brand's Popular Antiquities contains an interesting article 
upon the yew in graveyards. 

i. "How much does the music, nay, the impressiveness, of 
this stanza depend upon consonance ! The great booming with 



188 NOTES [Pages 5-G 

which it opens is repeated in the last word of the first, and also of 
the last line. The cruel word ' graspes^ ' is repeated in part in the 
harsh word ' stones.' Three lines, and six words in all, begin with 
the soft th : ' «ame ' is echoed by ' »iet,' ^underlying'' by '^ream- 
Zess' ; the r of ' roots' is heard again in 'wrapt,' the b in 'fiftres,' 
in 'a&oiit,' and ' 6ones.' " — Frederic Harrison. 

i. 1. Cf. XXXIX. i. 4. 
3. Cf. XXXIX. ii. 1. 

ii. 4. the little lives of men. Cf. "life's mere minute" — 
Browning, A Death in the Desert, 479 ; "This little life of mine," 
— Byron, Heaven and Earth, Sc. iii. ; " this little throb of life," — 
Beattie, The Minstrel, II. Hi.; "life's little day," — Gray, Ode on 
the Spring, 36; "Some spin away their little lives," — Gray, 
'•''Seeds of poetry and rhime,'''' 39. 

iv. 4. grow incorporate into thee. Has the poet here any allu- 
sion to classical stories of persons changed into trees ? 

III. Shall he yield to Sorrow, " a thing so blind," or shall he 
resist ? With this section compare LIX and note. 

i. 1. Sorrow, cruel fellowship. Cf. "sacred fellowship of 
tears." — Leigh Hunt, To the Author of Ion, ii. 9. 

3. sweet and bitter in a breath. Cf. LXXXVIII. ii. S-4 : 

" And in the midmost heart of grief 
Thy passion clasps a secret joy." 

4. What.whispers from thy lying lips ? Cf . XXXIX. iii. 2 : 
What whisper' d from her lying lips ? 

ii. 1. Cf. 

" Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky." 

— Pope, Essa7j on Man, I. 252. 



Pages G-7] NOTES 189 

3-4. Cf. Bomans viii. 22. 

4. the dying sun. Modern science teaches that the sun is 
gradually losing its heat. 

iii. 1. the phantom, Nature. The meaning is that material 
Nature is, after all, an unreality. 

IV. Grief pervades his sleep, but with morning comes the reso- 
lution not to yield. 

iii. 3-4. Cf. XX. iii. 4. "... the scientific impulse carries 
him too far when experimental physics are made to furnish a 
metaphor for unbearable emotion — 

' Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, 
That grief hath shaken into frost.' 

We have to understand that at a certain low temperature water, if 
shaken, will expand into ice, and break the vessel that contains it; 
and so a heart that is benumbed with grief will be rent if it is agi- 
tated by a too painful recollection. We may admire the techni- 
cal skill that has compressed all this into two short lines ; but the 
metaphor is too ingenious, and the effort of seizing the analogy un- 
doubtedly checks our sensibility to the poet's distress." — Lyall. 

iv. 1-2. Cf. 

" Misgivings, hard to vanquish or control, 
Mix with the day, and cross the hour of rest." 
— Wordsworth, To ... ("0 dearer far"), 5-6. 

V. Perhaps it is sinful to express his grief, yet he will do so to 
numb his pain. 

Cf. VIII. V. 3-vi. 4 ; XXI ; XXXVII. iv. 

i. 1-2. Cf. Prol. ix. 1 ; x. 1 ; XLVIII. iii. 3-4. 



190 NOTES [Pages 8-9 

ii. Cf . XXXVIII. ii. 3-4 ; LXXV. i. 2. 
iii. Cf. 

" But I have that within which passeth show: 
These but the trappings and the suits of woe." 

— Shakespeare, Hamlet, I. ii. 85-86. 

1. weeds: garments ; an old word still surviving in the phrase 
"widow's weeds." The word "weeds," in the sense "useless 
plants," is of a different origin. 

3-4. His grief is dimly outlined in his words, as a human form 
is dimly outlined through its clothes. 

VI. The emptiness of words of condolence. 
Written, apparently, in 1840 or 1841. (B.) Note that the poet 
includes the father (ii. 1), the mother (iii. 1), and the young 
woman (vii), all sorrowing for young and active manhood: thus 
typifying the universality of grief. 
1. Cf. 

"... whose common theme 
Is death of fathei'S, and who still hath cried, 
From the first corse till he that died to-day, 
' This must be so.' " 

— Shakespeare, Hamlet, I. ii. 103-106. 
ii. 3-4. Cf. 

" Nee nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secuta est, 
Qu?e non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris 
Flora tus." 
(" Night never succeeded day, nor dawn the night, without hear- 
ing lamentations mingled with sorrowful wailings.") 

— Lucretius, De Berum Natura, II. 578-580 (H. T.). 



Pages 9-11] NOTES » 191 

iv, 3-4. The reference is to the burial of sailors at sea in a 
shroud made of a hammock with a cannon-ball to sink it. This 
passage has now additional pathos from the fact that the poet's 
third son, Lionel, afterward died at sea, and was dropped into the 
" vast and wandering grave," April 20, 1880. 

— Memoir, II. 323. 

vii. Some touches in this and the following stanzas suggest that 
the picture may have been reflected from Collins's Ode on Popular 
Superstitions, vii, viii. 

1-2. Is there any justification for the incongruity of a " dove " 
with "golden hair" ? See LXIV. ii. 4 ; CVII. iii. 4, and notes. 

2. ranging golden hair. Perhaps an echo of 

" Cui flavam religas comam." 
(" . . . for whom thou bindest golden hair.") 

— Horace, Odes, I. v. 

viii. 4. a riband or a rose. Perhaps due to the following, re- 
lated by Hallam Tennyson : " In consequence of her sudden and 
terrible grief my aunt Emily was ill for many months, and very 
slowly recovered. ' We were waiting for her,' writes one of her 
friends, ' in the drawing-room the first day since her loss that she 
had been able to meet any one, and she came at last, dressed in 
deep mourning, a shadow of her former self, but with one white 
rose in her black hair as her Arthur loved to see her.' " 

— 3Iemoir, I. 108-100. 

xi. 3. perpetual maidenhood : a prophecy destined to be falsi- 
fied, for Miss Emily Tennyson married Captain Jesse, of the Royal 
Navy. It might, therefore, have been better art if the poet had 



192 * NOTES [Pages 11-12 

omitted, or, at least, modified this line, and all the more so as the 
loves of Emily and Hallam formed no essential part of the poem. 
See also LXXXIV. ii-v. 

4. unto me no second friend. Cf. 

" But who with me shall hold thy former place? 
Thiue image what new friendship can efface ? " 

— Byron, Epitaph on a Friend, 23-24. 

" O what are thousand living loves 
To that which cannot quit the dead? " 
— Byron, Stanzas (" One struggle more . . ."). 
In LXXXV. xxix. his grief has become less acute. 

VII. The poet visits Hallam's former residence, alone, at dawn, 
but finds no comfort. 

i. 1-2. The residence of Hallam, the historian, was 67 Wim- 

pole street. Gatty quotes "a celebrated clerical wit": "All 

things come. to an end" — a pause — "except Wimpole street"; 

but a map of London shows the street in question to be quite short. 

3-4. Cf. CXIX. i. 1-2. 

ii. 1. Cf. XIII. ii. 3 ; CXIX. iii. 4. 

iii. 4. The halting metre of this line may be intended to suggest 
the unpleasant effect of the surroundings upon the poet's conscious- 
ness. For a similarly laboring line, see L. i. 2. 

VIII. Just as a lover cherishes a flower fostered by the absent 
loved one, so he will cherish his " flower of poesy," which Hallam 
loved. 

i. 4. And learns her gone and far from home. The grammar 
of this is unusual, but the same form recurs in XCVII. ix. 2 ; 
CXXIV. V. 4. 



Pages 12-16J NOTES 193 

ii. 4. emptied of delight. Of. 

" And Lycius' arms were empty of delight." 

— Keats, Lamia. 
V. 3, vi. Cf. V ; XXI ; XXXVII. iv. 

IX. Apostrophe to the ship bearing Arthur's body. A peaccfid 
voyage bespoken. 

i. 1. Italian shore. As the vessel with Hallani's body sailed 
from Trieste, in Austria, the use of this phrase must be regarded 
as an instance of poetic license. 

iii. 1. ruder : a Latin use of the comparative which is found in 
other places in this poem. 

2. Phosphor : the morning star. The word means " bringer 
of light." Cf. CXXI. iii. 1, v. 1. 

V. 2. widow'd race. Cf. XVII. v. 4. See also XL. i. 1 ; LXXX V. 
xxix. 1. 

4. More than my brothers are to me. This line, like a recur- 
ring phrase in music, appears again in LXXIX. i. 1. 

X. The apostrophe continued. It is sweeter to be buried in 
one's native earth than " fathom-deep in brine." 

V. 4. tangle : the popular name of a kind of seaweed. 

XL The calm of an autumn day, when the year is dying, inten- 
sifies the poet's " calm despair." 

An excellent example of the poetic effect produced by repetition, 
the repetition of " calm " in many different connections. A similar 
device is used in L and CI. 

Some touches here, " the faded leaf," " autumn bowers," "leaves 
that redden to the fall," are full of suggestion, leading up to iv. 
3-4 and v. 3-4. 
o 



194 NOTES [Pages 16-17 

i. 4. The chestnut pattering to the ground. Cf. 

"When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the woods are 
still." 

— Bryant, The Death of the Fhnoers, 21. 

*' Now here, now there, an acorn from its cup 
Dislodged, tlirough sere leaves rustled, or at once 
To the bare earth dropped with a startling sound." 

— Wordsworth, The Prelude, 83-85. 

iii. 3. lessening : in perspective. 

4. the bounding main : the ocean on the boundary of the 
scene. Cf. the bounding sky, XVII. ii. 2 ; the bounding hill, 
LXXXIX. viii. 2. 
iv. 2. Cf. XV. i. 3. 
4. Cf. XVI. i. 2. 

XII. His spirit leaves his body and goes to meet the ship. 
dove (i. 1), ark (ii. 2), and ocean (iii. 1) take the reader's 
thought back to the Biblical story of the flood. 

ii. 2. this mortal ark : the poet's own body ; see stanza v. 

3. A weight of nerves without a mind. The suggestion is 
that the body still has the power of feeling and suffering, but not 
of clear, collected thinking. 

Cf. " Non tu corpus eras sine pectore." 

(" Thou wert not a body without a mind.") 

— Horace, Epistles, I. iv. 6. 
" Corpus inane animae." 
( " A body empty of soul.") 

— Ovid, Metamorphoses, II. 611. 



Pages 18-19] NOTES I95 

V. 3. the body : i.e. Tennyson's. 

4. That I have been an hour away. This line seems to be 
entirely without value in the working out of the poem. 

XIII. His loss is ever new. He longs for the peace Time alone 
can bring. 

i. Cf. 

" I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms, 
And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms. 
I wake : — no more I hear, no more I view. 
The phantom flies me, as unkind as you. 
I call aloud ; it hears not what I say : 
I stretch my empty arms ; it glides away." 

— Pope, Eloisa to Ahelard, 233-238. 

" Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
Brought to me, like Alcestis from the grave, 

But O ! as to embrace me she inclined, 
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night." 
— Milton, Sonnet XXIV, On His Deceased Wife. 

Cf. VII. ii. 1; CXIX. iii. 4. 

many years : in apposition with Time. 

Cf. XIX. iii. 2-4; XLIX. 

Cf. XL VIII. iv; LXV. ii. 3-4. 

XIV. Yet it is so difficult to realize his loss that he would not feel 
it strange to meet the living Arthur on the quay. 

This section is a single sentence. So also are LXIV, LXXXVI, 
C, CXXIX, and CXXXI. 



ii. 


3. 


iv. 


1. 




4. 


V. 


1. 



196 NOTES [Pages 20-22 

i. 2-3. Young {The Merchant^ Strain I, 148-149) rimes quay 
with survey : and Byron ( The Curse of Minerva) rimes it with away. 
ii. 1. mufQed round with woe. Cf. 

" A gowu of grief my body shall attire." 
— Sir Walter Raleigh, " Like hermit poor . . .' 

XV. A storm at nightfall has the effect of intensifying his " wild 
unrest." 

i. 3. Cf. XI. iv.2. 

ii. 1. The waters curl'd. Curl is frequently used by the poets 
in this sense. Cf. LXXIX. iii. 1, and "the curled streams," ^- 
Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess^ I. iii. 29; "the curled 
waters," — Shakespeare, King Lear, III. ii ; and 
"... the stream boils, 
And curls, and works, and swells, ready to sparkle." 

— Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, I. ii. 
4. The sunbeam strikes along the world. Cf. 

"... there smote along the hall 
A beam of light ..." 

— Tennyson, The Holy Grail, 186-187. 

iv. 2. And but for fear it is not so. This is to be connected 
with iii. 1-3. Miss Chapman explains thus : " He loves the reck- 
less, changeful fury of the elements — or would love it — but for the 
thought that it may be wrecking Arthur's ship." 
3. Cf. XVI.. i. 2. 
V. 4. A looming bastion fring'd with fire. Cf. 

"... a black cloud marked with streaks of fire." 

— Coleridge, The Destiny of Nations, 299, 



Pages 22-24] NOTES 197 

XVI. He is surprised at the confused state of his mind. Cf. 
IV, LXVI. 

i. 1. What words are these? Young uses the same phrase : 
Night Thoughts, IX, 2366. 

2. calm despair takes the thought back to XI. iv. 4 ; and 
wild unrest connects with XV. iv. 3. 

iii. 1-2. Cf. 

"I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake 
Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twiued, 
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward 
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries 
With quick, long beaks, and in the deep there lay 
Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky." 
— Shelley, Prometheus Unboiuid, III. iv. 386-391. 

"... the floating mirror shines, 
Reflects each flower that on its border grows, 
And a new heaven in its fair bosom shows." 

— Addison, Cato, I. vi. 88-90. 

XVII. The apostrophe to the ship is resumed from IX and X. 
His blessing will always follow the vessel. 

i. 2. Compell'd thy canvas. Cf. 

"Keel-compelling gale." 

— Byron, Childe Harold, II. xx. 1. 

ii. 2. the bounding sky. Cf. the bounding main, XI. iii. 4 ; 
the bounding hill, LXXXIX. viii. 2. 

iii. 2. like a line of light. Note repetition of sound in accented 
vowels. Cf. XLI. i ; XCI. iv. 4. 

iv. 3-4. Cf. 



198 NOTES [Pages 24-25 

" All starry culmination drop 
Balm-dews to bathe thy feet." 

— Tennyson, The Talking Oak, 207-268. 

"By her [Diana, the moon] the virtues of tho stars down slide." 
— Raleigh, The ShephercVs Praise of His Sacred Diana. 

V. 4. widow' d race. Cf. IX. v. 2. See also XL. i. 1 ; LXXXV. 
xxix. 1. 

XVIII. There is comfort in knowing that his friend sleeps amid 
familiar scenes. 
i. 2-4. Cf. 

' "... Lay her i' the earth, 

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
May violets spring." 

— Shakespeare, Hamlet., V. i. 261-263. 

** Nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla 
Nascentur violje ? " 
.(" Now from his tomb and his blessed ashes will not violets be 
bornV") 

— Persius, Sat., I. 39-40. (C.) 

There is an interesting archaeological note on this conceit in 
Conington and Nettleship's Persius. 

iii. 3. whatever loves to weep. A classical touch. In the Greek 
and Roman dirges, various objects of nature were summoned to 
join in the lamentation for the departed subject of the nKuirning. 

iv. 2-3. Cf. 2 Kings iv. 34. (B.) 

V. 2. Cf. XVI. iv-v. 



Pages 26-27] NOTES 199 

4. The words that are not heard again. Cf. 

"... the sound of a voice that is still." 

— Tennyson, "Break, break, break." 

XIX. The ebb and the flow of the tide in the AVye symbolize the 
subsidence and the accession of his grief. 

Written at Tintern Abbey. (H. T.) 

Note the intensity of suggestion pervading the phraseology. Some 
notev^^orthy words in this connection are: " darken' d heart," 
"hushes," "silence," "hush'd," " hush'd," "grief," "tears," 
"sorrow," "deeper anguish." 

iii. 3. Cf. XX. iii. 4. 

4. Cf. XIII. iv. 4 ; XLIX. 

iv. 3. deeper: i.e. deeper than the tide. 

XX. "The lesser griefs" that touch the servants of a dead 
master, and the deeper griefs of his children. 

iii. 3. But there are other griefs within. Cf. 

"A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, 
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioued grief, 
"Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, 
• In word, or sigh, or tear — " 

— Coleridge, Dejection, An Ode, ii. 1-4. 

See also the extract from Dry den, below. 

4. tears that at their fountain freeze. Cf. IV. iii. 4 ; XIX. 

iii. 3 ; also 

" That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears." 
— Bykon, >Ste w^as /or ilfwsic ("There's not a joy . . .") (P.) 



200 NOTES [Pages 28-30 

" And the sweetest sight was the icy tear, 
Which horror froze in the bhie eye clear 
Of a maid by her lover lying." 

— Byron, The DeviVs Drive. 

" Sure there's a lethargy in mighty woe, 
Tears stand congeal'd, and cannot flow : 
And the sad soul retires into her inmost room." 

— Dryden, Threnodia Augustalis, 2-4. 
The conceit "a fountain of tears " is Biblical. See Jer. ix. 1. 
V. 4. How good ! how kind ! and he is gone. Cf. 
" Of him what orphan can complain? 
Of him what widow make her moan ? 
But such as wish him here again, 
And miss his goodness now he's gone." 

— Otway, The Poefs Complaint, xvii. 20-24. 

XXI. Though blamed for it, the poet sings his grief because he 
must. Cf. V. ; VIII. v. 3-vi ; XXXVII. iv. 

i. 3-4. A very exquisite expression of the thought that the 
music of his poetry grows out of his grief. 
V. 4. ... and charms 

Her secret from the latest moon. Cf. XCVII. vi. 2 ; also 
"... that impious self-esteem ? 

That aims to trace the secrets of the skies." 

— Beattie, The Minstrel, I. i. 7-8. 

vii. 2. ranged: a favorite word with the poet. Cf. XLIV. iii. 4; 
XLVI. i. 1 ; LXXXI. i. 2 ; LXXXV. vi. 2 ; XCIII. iii. 1. 

XXII. The pleasant companionship of four years, and its sad 
ending. 



Pages 30-32] NOTES 201 

i. 1. path. Cf. LXVIII. ii. 2. 

iii. 4. There sat the Shadow fear'd of man. Cf. 

"... toward the deep vale 
Where Death sits robed in his all-sweepiug shadow." 

— Byron, Marino Faliero, II. 1. 
iv. 4. Observe the suggestively murmuring sound of the line. 

XXIII. As the poet wanders on toward death, the happy past 
appears brighter by contrast, 

i. 3. Alone, alone. B. cites several examples to illustrate the 
"pathetic effect" of the repetition, but perhaps the best one has 
escaped his observation : — 

"Alone, alone, all, all alone, 
Alone on a wide, wide sea." 
— Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner, 232-233. 
1. 4-ii. 1. Cf . XXVI. iv. 3. 

ii. 1. Death will reveal the truth or the falsity of each creed, 
iv. 3-4. Cf. 

"... sometimes in happy talk, 
Sometimes in silence (also a sort of talk 
Where friends are matched . . . ) " 

— Leigh Hunt, A Heaven upon Earth, 6-8. 

"Ev'n thought meets thought ere from the lips it part." 

— Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, 95. (B.) 
V. 1. Cf. XXIV. ii. 1. 
3^. Cf. 

" . . . as if Spring 
Lodged in their innocent bosoms." 

— Wordsworth, Maternal Grief, 35-36, 



202 NOTES [Pages 33-35 

vi. 1-2. The reference is to discussions of Greek philosophy. 
Argive is derived from Argos^ a prominent city of ancient Greece. 
Lines 3-4 refer to discussions of Greek poetry, especially pastoral 
poetry, such as flourished in that part of Greece known as Arkadia. 

XXIV. Was the past really so happy, or does the imagination 
only make it seem so ? 

i. 3-4. These lines refer to spots on the sun. dash'd. Cf. 
LII. iv. 2 ; LXXXIII. iii. 3. 

ii. 1. Cf. XXIII. V. 1. 

iii. 1-2. It is well known that objects seem larger when seen 
through a haze. With this stanza compare : — 

" ' Tis distance lends enchantment to the view." 

— Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope, I. 7. 

iv. Cf. LXXIV. ii-iii. 

XXV. " The past was not perfect, but Love removed all sense 
of its imperfection." — Bradley. 

i. 2. with equal feet. Cf. 

"... sequiturque patrem non passibus sequis." 

(". . . and follows his father with steps not equal.") 

— Virgil, uEneid, IL 724. (B.) 

iii. Cf. LXXXV. xxii. 

XXVI. If love could change to indifference, life would be value 
less. 

iii. 1 2. The poet once said : " To God all is present. He sees 
present, past, and future as one." — Memoir, I. 322. Cf. 



Pages 35-36] NOTES 203 

"... Doth the Omnipotent 
Hear of to-morrows or of yesterdays? 
There is to God nor future nor a past : 
Throned in his might, all times to him are present: 
He hath no lapse, no past, no time to come : 
He sees before him one eternal noio." 

— H. KiRKE White, Tme, 383-388. 
iv. 3. Cf. XXIII. 1. 4-ii. 1. 

4. my proper scorn : scorn of myself. A frequent use of 
"proper" (Latin x>roprius) by the poets. Cf. 

" I have been cunning in my overthrow, 
The careful pilot of my proper woe." 

— Byron, Epistle to Augusta^ iii. 8. 

XXVII. Man is greater by his capacity to love and to suffer, 
Cf. XXXV. V. 2-vi. 

i. 2. noble rage. "Rage-' is frequently used by the poets in 
the sense of "great elevation of feeling, enthusiasm," etc. Cf. 
"Chill penury repressed their noble rage." 
— Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 51. 

" How often I repeat their rage divine, 
To lull my griefs, and steal my heart from woe ! " 

— Young, Mght Thoughts, I. 447. 

iv. 1. I hold it true. Cf. I held it truth, I. i. 1. 
3-4. Cf. I. iv. 3. Collins cites 
" 'Tis better to have been left than never to have been loved." 
— CoNGREVE, The Way of the World, II. i. 

Tennyson repeats these two lines, LXXXV. i. 3-4. 



204 NOTES [Pages 37-39 

XXVIII. The Christmas bells bring him sorrow touch' d with 
joy. Sections XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, refer to Somersby. 

i. 1-2. Repeated in CIV. i. 1-2. 

o. Rawnsley says: "It is the custom in Lincolnshire to ring 
[Christmas bells] for a month or six weeks before Christmas." 
With the rime of lines 1 and 4, compare that of XXXI. iv. 1-4, 
and that of CIV. i. 1-4. 

iii. 3-4. Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, 
Peace and goodwill to all mankind. 
A most effective chiasmus, or reversal of word-order. The sound 
and the swing of the words quite vividly suggest the swinging 
chime of the bells themselves. Cf. Luke ii. 14. 

iv. Cf. XXXIV. iv. 

XXIX. The present Christmas Eve is celebrated, without glad- 
ness, simply for custom's sake. 

ii. 2. the threshold of the night. Tennyson uses the same phrase 
in The Voyage^ 18 ; and Wordsworth has "... the threshold of 
another year" in Mary^ Queen of Scots, 11. 

iii. 3-4. These lines suggest that all humanity, of which the one 
household is a type, is ruled by custom. 

iv. 1. Old sisters of a day gone by : i.e. Use and Wont. 
4. They too will die. Cf. CV. iii. 4. 

XXX. A "vain pretence of gladness," "a merry song," "a 
gentler feeling," " tears," thoughts of immortality. Cf. LXXVIII, 
CV. 

i. 2-3. The rime of hearth and earth recurs in LXXVIII. i. 2-3. 
In the southern part of the United States hearth is often pronounced, 



Pages 39-40] NOTES 205 

by the uneducated, to rime perfectly with earth, and such pronun- 
ciation was doubtless once generally accepted. Johnson's Diction- 
ary (American edition, 1818) gives the pronunciation as at present, 
though the poets, both before that time and afterward, rime hearth 
as in this instance. See Milton, Vacation Exercise, 59-60, II Pen- 
seroso, 81-82 ; Shelley, The Bevolt of Islam, I. xxxix. Lines 
Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon, ii. 2-4 ; 
Goldsmith, The Hermit, 53-55 ; Scott, The Lady of the Lake, III. 
xi. 19-20, Bokehy, VI. vi. 1-2 ; Byron, Childe Harold, II. xcii. 
2-4-5-7. 

4. And sadly fell our Christmas-eve. Cf . 

And calmly fell our Christmas-eve, LXXVIII. i. 4 ; 
And strangely fell our Christmas-eve, CV. i. 4. 

The difference of but a single word in these lines is important as 
indicating the differences in the poet's mood. The words sadly, 
calmly, strangely, are the keynotes to the sections in which they 
occur. 

ii. 3-4. Hallam's shade reappears in the Epilogue, xxii, but 
there as a benevolent guest. 

iv. The play of the words sung, song, sang, sang, in this stanza 
is very effective, and saiig chimes in again in vi. 2, as a sort of 
parting refrain to the melody. 

vi, vii. Cf. LXXXII. ii. 2. 

vii. 1. rapt recurs in LXXXVI. ii. 1 ; CIII. xiii. 1. 

XXXI. The unknown nature of the life after death. 

This miracle receives an entirely different treatment at Brown- 
ing's hands. See his Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Ex- 
perience of Karshish, the Arab Physician. 



206 NOTES [Pages 41-44 

iv. 1-4. Chaucer also rimes evanngelist with Jhesn Crist. See 
his Prologue to the Tale of 31elibceus, 25-26 ; and compare 
XXVIII. i ; CIV. 1. 

2. The rest remaineth unreveal'd. Thackeray has a curi- 
ously similar passage in a somewhat different connection: "The 
secret of all secrets, the secret of the other life, and the better world 
beyond ours, may not this be unrevealed to some ?" — The New- 
comes, Vol. II. Ch. 30. 

4. that Evangelist. Only one of the evangelists relates 
this miracle. See John xi. 

XXXII. Mary's great love for Lazarus is superseded by her 
greater love for Christ. Thrice blessed are all such as she. 

i. 1. prayer: adoration. So also in iv. 1, and XXXIII. ii. 1. 
(B.) 

ii. 4. the Life. Bradley cites John xi. 25. Cf. also John 
xiv. 6. 

iii. 3-4. See John xii. 3. 

XXXIII. The sacredness of pure and simple faith, 
i. 1-2. Cf. Prol. vi-vii; XCVI. iv-vi. 

ii. 4. melodious days. Cf. harmonious years, in XLIV. iii. 1. 

XXXIV. Without immortality, life, the universe, God himself 
would be meaningless. 

The 3Iemoir (I. 321) quotes the poet as saying: "Hast Thou 
made all this for naught ! Is all this trouble of life worth under- 
going if we only end in our own corpse-coffins at last ? If you 
allow a God, and a God allows this strong instinct and universal 
yearning for another life, surely that is in a measure a presump- 
tion of its truth. We cannot give up the mighty hopes that make 



Pages 44-45] NOTES 207 

us men" : and to Bishop Lightfoot he said, "The cardinal point 
of Christianity is tlie Life after Death." — Memoir, I. 321 n. See 
also his poems Vastness and Wages. With this section may be 
compared : — 

" Ay, but to die, and go, alas ! 

Where all have gone, and all must go ! 
To be the nothing that I was 
Ere born to life and living woe ! 

Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
Count o'er thy days from anguish free, 

And know, whatever thou hast been, 
'Tis something better not to be." 

— Byron, Euthanasia, 29-36. 

i. 1-2. Cf. Prol. iii. 3 ; LVI. iii-vi. 
iv. Cf. XXVIII. iv. 

XXXV. Even love itself, without the hope of immortality, 
would be but a Satyr's love. 

i. 2. the narrow house : a common expression among the poets 
for grave or coffin. See, for instance, H. Kirke White, Lines 
Written in Wilford Churchyard, 48 ; William Cullen Bryant, 
Thanatopsis, 12 ; and the Macpherson-Ossian poems, Oithona and 
Can-ic-Thura. 

iii. 2-4. Cf. CXXIII. ii. ; also 

" From the bleak shores of the sea to the lands where the Father of 
Waters, 
Seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them down to the ocean." 
— Longfellow, Evangeline, Pt. II. 10-11. 



208 2iOTES [Pages 45-K) 

3. JEonian. This word, as well as its primitive, ceon^ were 
favorites with the poet. They often occur in his conversations as 
recorded in the Memoir. Cf. XCV. xi, 1 ; CXXVII. iv. 4 ; and 

"iEonian Evolution, swift or slow, 
Thro' all the Spheres ..." 

— Tennyson, The Bing, 42-43. 

Cf. also his poem, The Making of Man, 4. 
V. 3-vi. Cf. XXVII. 

XXXVI. " The blessing of having Truth incarnated in a life in 
Christ." — Robertson. 

Hallam Tennyson writes : " When questions were written to 
him about Christ, he would say to me, * Answer for me that I 
have given my belief in In Memoriam ' " : and in a footnote he 
cites this section. — Memoir, I. 325. 

i. 2. mystic frame. Cf. LXXVIII. v. 2. 

ii. 3. Cf. 

" Fictions in form, hut in their substance truths, 
Tremendous truths ..." 

— Wordsworth, The Excursion, VI. 545-546. 

"Example draws where precept fails, 
And sermons are less read than tales." 

— Prior, The Turtle and Sparrow, 192-193. 

•' Nor for the fiction is the work less fine: 
Fables have pith and moral discipline." 
— John Webster, To My Kind Friend, blaster Anthony 3Iunday. 

iii. 1. the Word. Cf. John i. 1. 
1-4. Cf. 



Pages 47-i8] NOTES 209 

" Peace settles where the intellect is meek, 
And Love is dutiful in thought and deed ; 
Through Thee communion with that Love I seek: 
The faith Heaven strengthens where he moulds the creed." 
— Wordsworth, To . . . ("0 dearer far . . ."). 

iv. Cf. 

" A language lofty to the learned, yet plain 
To those that feed the flock, or guide the plough, 
Or from its husk strikeout the bounding grain." 

— Young, Night Thoughts, IX. 1664-1666. 

XXXVII. The poet feels his unworthiness to speak of divine 
mysteries. 

i. 1. Urania. Among the Greeks the muse of astronomy, 
Milton (Par. Lost, VII) made her the muse of the loftiest poetry, 
and Tennyson follows his example. 

4. abler. Is this the most appropriate adjective ? 

ii. 2. Parnassus : a mountain in Greece, celebrated as the 
haunt of Apollo and the muses, and therefore as the home of the 
arts, especially of music and poetry. 

iii. 1. Melpomene : among the Greeks the muse of tragedy. 
P>radley points out that Spenser, in the Shepherd's Calendar, 
November, regards her as the muse of elegy ; but Horace had done 
so long before. See his Odes, I. xxiv. 

iv. Cf. V ; viii. v. 3-vi. 4 ; XXI. 

vi. 3. Perhaps there is a distant allusion here to Matthew xxi. 
28-30. 

4. darkened sanctities with song. Perhaps a reminiscence or 
unconscious imitation of the language of Job xxxviii. 2 : " dark- 
enetli counsel by words without knowledge." 
P 



210 NOTES [Page 49 

XXXVIII. All the poet's surroundings have been saddened by 
Hallam's death, and even his songs have now only "a doubtful 
gleam of solace." 

With XXXVIII compare LXXXIII and CXV- 
ii. 3-4. Cf . V. ii ; LXXV. i. 2. 
ill. Cf. 

" And if the blessed know 

Their ancient cares, even now the unfading groves, 

Where haply Milton roves 
With Spenser, hear the enchanted echoes round 

Through farthest heaven resound 
Wise Somers, guardian of their fame below." 

— Akenside, To the Hon. Charles Townshend, vi. 1. 

lii. 2. spirits render'd free. Cf. Thy ransom'd reason, LXI. 
i. 2. 

3-4. Cf. 

"... to pay 
Such honors to thee as my numbers may ; 
Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, 
Not scorn'd in heaven, though little noticed here." 

— CowPER, On the Beceipt of My Mother'' s Picture. 

XXXIX. Even the blossoming of the yew " passes into gloom 
again." For another description of the return of spring, see CXV ; 
but the poet's grief has there greatly subsided. See also Shelley, 
Adonais, xviii-xxi. This section was added in 1872. 

i. 3. fruitful cloud and living smoke. " At a particular stage 
of its flowering, a yew which bears male flowers, if struck, or even 
if shaken strongly by the wind, will send up the pollen in a cloud 



Pages 50-51] NOTES ^ 211 

of yellow 'smoke.'" — Bradley. The function of the pollen in 
plant life is the artistic justilication of fruitful and living. 

i. 4-ii. 1. Cf. II. i. 

ii. 2. golden hour. Cf. LXXXV. xxvii. 2. 

iii. 2. Cf. III. i. 4. 

XL. " Death the spirit's bridal-day. But the bride returns to 
her friends ; not so the spirit." — Robertson. 

i. 1. widow'd. Cf. IX. v. 2 ; XVII. v. 4 ; LXXXV. xxix. 1. 
ii. 4. Make April of her tender eyes. Cf. 

"... you descry 
. . . smiling April in each eye." 
— R. W., On Bichard Brome's " Sparagus Garden.'''' 

*' Thy beauteous Belvidera, like a wretch 
That's doom'd to banishment, came weeping forth, 
Shining thro' tears, like April-suns in showers, 
That labor to o'ercome the cloud that loads 'em." 

— Otway, Venice Preserved., I. i. 

iii. 4. She enters other realms of love. The softness of the 
consonants, together with the repetition of the vowels, make this a 
very musical line. 

iv. 3-4. Cf. Epih xxxii. 3-4 ; also 



Distinguished link in being's endless chain." 

— Young, Night Thoughts, I. 73. 



212 NOTES [Page 52 

vi. 1. Ay me, the difference I discern ! Cf. 

** But she is in her grave, and oh, 
The diifereuce to me ! " 
— Wordsworth, " She dwelt among the untrodden ways." 

viii. 1. Cf. 

" And now shake hands across the brink 
Of that deep grave to which I go." 
— Tennyson, " My life is full of weary days." 

4. undiscover'd lands. Cf. 

" The undiscovered country from whose bourn 
No traveller returns ..." 

— Shakespeare, Hamlet^ III. i. 79-80. 

". . . weep not for Mortimer, 
That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, 
Goes to discover countries yet unknown." 
— Marlowe, Edward 11. (The younger Mortimer's last words.) 

*' Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum 

lUuc uude negant redire quenquam." 

(" Who now goes, by a shadowy path, to that place whence none 

is permitted to return.") ^. ^^ , „ ^,„„ ... 

^ ^ — Catullus, Odes^ ni. 

XLI. Dread that, in the eternal growth after death, he may 
never overtake the greater Hallam. 

i. Note the sound of "long" i in this stanza, and compare 
XVII. iii. 2 ; XCI. iv. 4. 

ii. 1. thou art turn'd to something strange. Cf. 



Pages 53-54] NOTES 213 

" Nothing of him that doth fade 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange." 
— Shakespeare, The Tempest, I. ii. 399-401. 

ill. 4. flash. Cf. XLIV. ii. 4 ; XCV. ix. 4. 

iv. 4. forgotten fields. H. T. says, " I have thought that 'for- 
gotten fields' implies 'not dwelt on, and so disregarded — a creed 
that is outworn.'" Sir Richard Jebb suggests "God-forgotten," 
and Bradley conjectures ''forgotten by Heaven." 

V. With this stanza compare 

" O dearer far than light and life are dear, 
Full oft our human foresight I deplore : 
Trembling, through my unworthiness, with fear 
That friends, by death disjoin'd, may meet no more ! 
Misgivings, hard to vanquish or control, 
Mix with the day, and cross the hour of rest; 
While all the future, for thy purer soul, 
With ' sober certainties ' of love is blest." 

— Wordsworth, "0 dearer far ..." 

vi. 3. the secular to-be. Cf. The secular abyss to come, 
LXXVI. ii. 2. 

4. a life behind. Cf. 

"In the gray distance, half a life away." 

— Tennyson, The Last Tournament, 6^35. 

XLII. But perhaps Hallam will train him there " to riper 
growth." 
i. 2. still : always. So often in the earlier poets* 



214 NOTES [Pages 54-56 

XLIII. If death be but a sleep, love will endure through it. 
i. Cf. 

**. . . what is this ' sleep ' which seems 
To hound all ? Cau there be a ' waking ' point 
Of crowning life ? ..." 

— Browning, Pauline, 812-814. 

i. 1, If Sleep and Death be truly one. Cf. Sleep, Death's 
twin-brother, LXVIII. 1. 2-3, and note. The likening of death 
to sleep is Biblical. See Psalms xiii. 3. 

3. intervital, literally, "between lives"; i.e. between this 
life and the next. 

iii. 2. that still garden of the souls. Perhaps suggested by the 
Greek idea of Paradise : 7ra/3d6eto-os, pleasure ground., garden. 

iv. Cf. 

'* Edmund, we did not err! 

Our best affections here 
They are not like the toys of infancy, 

The Soul outgrows them not! 

We do not cast them off! 

O, if it could he so, 
It were indeed a dreadful thing to die ! " 

— SouTHEY, The Dead Friend. 

XLiV. "Is the life beyond merely oblivion mixed up with 
gleams of recollection, as here ? " — Robertson. 

i. 2. more and more. Cf. Prol. vii. 1 ; CXVIII. v. 1. 

ii. 4. flash. Cf. XLI. iii. 4 ; XCV. ix. 4. 

iii. 1. harmonious years. Cf. melodious days, XXXIII. ii. 4. 



Pages 56-58] NOTES 215 

3-4. Cf. 

" If aught of things that here befall 
Touch a spirit among things divine." 
— Tennyson, On the Death of the Duke of Wellington^ vi. 59-60- 

iii. 4. ranging. Cf. LXXXV. vi. 2 ; XCIII. iii. 1. 
iv. 2. resolve the doubt. Cf. LXVIII. iii. 4. 

3. My guardian angel. See Mattheio xviii. 10. 

XLV. The experience and development of this life are not lost 
beyond the grave. This section and the next two give a complete 
epitome of existence, from birth and infancy, through life, and 
into the world to come. 

iii-iv. The meaning is that during this life man becomes an 
individual separate and distinct from all others, and that this 
individuality persists beyond the grave. 

iii. 1. Cf. Epil. xxxii. 2. 

iv. 1. blood and breath. Cf. 

" This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath." 

— Shakespeare, King John, IV. ii. 246. (B.) 

XLVI. Nay, the events of this life will then be more clearly 
seen. 

i. 1. This line is the "absolute " construction. 
2. path. Cf. LXVIII, ii. 2. 

2-3. Our earlier years, with all that they contained of grief or 
joy, grow dim and indistinct as time passes. 

ii. In the after-life we shall see clearly all the events of the 
present existence — from birth to death — " from marge to marge." 

ii. 3. from marge to marge. Cf. iv. 4. 

iv. 1. Cf. CXXVI. i. 1. 



216 NOTES [Pages 58-59 

3. Love, a brooding star. As if Lord of the whole life. (H. T.) 
XLVII. Individuality and identity persist after death. 

i. Cf. 

"... our freed souls rejoin the universe." 

— Byron, Childe Harold^ IV. cii. 9. 

"... but the pure spirit shall flow 
Back to the burning fountain whence it came, 
A portion of the eternal . . ." 

— Shelley, Adonais^ xxxviii. 5-7. 

iii. 3. hit is perhaps not a very elegant term here, 
iv. 2. fade away. Cf. L. iv. 1. 

XLVIII. These songs are not intended to settle doubt ; they 
merely take a "shade of doubt " and make it " vassal unto love." 
ii. 2. Cf. LIX. ii. 3. 

4. vassal unto love. Cf. CXXVI. i. 1 ; ii. 1 ; also 

" Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage." 

— Shakespeare, Sonnet X.'^W. 

" So hast thou [i.e. Love] often done (ay me, the more!) 
To me thy vassal ..." 

— Spenser, An Hymn in Honour of Love., 141-142. 

iii. 3-4. Cf . Prol. ix. 1, x. 1 ; V. i. 1-2. 
iv. 3-4. Cf. XIII. V. 1; LXV. ii.; also 

" My thoughts, like swallows, skim the main, 
And bear my spirit back again 
Over the earth, and through the air, 
A wild bird and a wanderer." 

—Byron, Tlie Siege of Corinth, 36-39. 



Pages 60-62] NOTES 217 

XLIX. But they only lighten up the surface of his sorrow; they 
do not touch its depths. 

With XLIX cf. XIII. iv. 4; XIX. iii. 4. 

ii. 4. To make the sullen surface crisp. For this use of crisp, 
cf. Tennyson, We are free, 10; Byron, Childe Harold, IV. liii. 
6-7, Sardanapalus, I. ii. 0, II. i. 257, IV. i. 12; Milton, Paradise 
Lost, IV. 237. 

L. He asks Arthur to be near him at various times of distress. 
The insistence of Be near me at the beginning of each stanza of 
this section produces a very fine effect. 

i. 2, Note the suggestive metrical accent of this line, and com- 
pare VIII. i. 4 and note. 

iii. Cf. Blake's poem, The Fly. 

iii. 1. Cf. LV. V. 1. 

2. Cf. 

" And he, poor insect of a summer's day." 

— H. KiRKE White, Time, 154. 

iv. 1. fade away. Cf. XLVII. iv. 2. 

LI. The dead, grown wiser in the after-life, can make allow- 
ance for defect in the living. 

This section appears to have been written in 1841. See Bradley, 
page 16. 



Cf. 



The love where Death has set his seal, 
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal, 

Nor falsehood disavow: 
And, what were w^orse, thou canst not see 
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me." 

— Byron, Stanzas (" And thou art dead 



218 NOTES [Pages 63-65 

LII. Love makes allowance even for defect of love, from which 
all other defect proceeds. 

ill. 4. Hallam Tennyson {Memoir^ I. 326) quotes the poet as 
saying, " I am always amazed when I read the New Testament at 
the splendour of Christ's purity and holiness, and at his infinite 
pity." 

iv. 2. dash'd. Cf. XXIV. i. 4 ; LXXXIII. iii. 3. 

4. hath sunder'd shell from pearl : hath separated the good 
from the evil. 

LIII. "Perhaps evil is even sometimes the way to good, though 
this doctrine may easily lead to evil rather than to good." 

ii, iii, iv. Tennyson's explanation of these stanzas is : "There 
is a passionate heat of nature in a rake sometimes. The nature 
that yields emotionally may turn out straighter than a prig's. Yet 
we must not be making excuses, but we must set before us a rule 
of good for young as for old." (H. T.) 

ii. 1. give : yield, surrender. 

iv. 1. Hold thou the good. Cf. 1 Thess. v. 21. 

2. divine philosophy. This phrase is used by Ak; nside, 
Pleasures of Imagination^ II. 63, and by Milton, Comus, 476. 

LIV. An intuitive but infantile trust that all has a beneficent 
purpose. Cf. CXXIV. 

With this section compare Beattie, The Minstrel, I. xlix-1. 

i. 2. Cf. iv. 3 ; LXXXV. xxiii. 3-4 ; Epil. xxxvi. 3. 

iv. 1. Behold, we know not anything. Cf. Prol. vi. 1 ; CXXXT 
iii. 2 ; also Joh viii. 9. 

1-2. Cf . Prol. i. 4 ; LV. v.; CXXXI. iii. 1-2. 

3. Cf. LIV. i. 2 ; LXXXV. xxiii. 3-4 ; Epil. xxxvi. 3. 



Pages 6(J-()7] ^OTES 219 

V. 2. An infant crying in the night. Cf, CXXIV. v. 3 ; also 

"... veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia csecis 
In tenebris metuunt, sic nos in Ince . . ." 
("As children tremble and dread everything in the blind dark- 
ness, so we in the light . . .") 

— Lucretius, De Berum Natura, II. 55-56. 

4. with no language but a cry. As infant literally means 
7iot speaking, these words are particularly appropriate. Compare 
CXXIV. V, vi, and note the firmer basis there reached. 

LV. As Nature gives no comfort, he gropes blindly, by faith, 
for truth. 

i. 3. Derives ; originates, springs. 
4. Cf. LXXXVII. ix. 4 ; CXI. v. 4. 

ii. 3. So careful of the type. In a revulsion of feeling the poet 
contradicts this in the next section. 

iv. Cf. I. i. 3-4 ; also 

"... gazing, trembling, patiently ascend, 
Treading beneath their feet all visible things 
As steps, that upward to their Father's throne 
Lead gradual ..." 

— Coleridge, Beligious Musings, 50-53. 

" Teach me, by this stupendous scaffolding. 
Creation's golden steps, to climb to Thee." 

— Young, Night Thoughts, IX. 590-591. 

"... even thy malice serves 
To me but as a ladder to mount up 
To such a height of happiness, where I shall 
Look down with scorn on thee, and on the world." 

— Massinger, Tfie Virgin Martijr, IV. iii. 



220 NOTES [Pages 68-69 

V. Cf. Prol. i. 4 ; LIV. iv. 1-2 ; CXXXI. iii. 1-2. 

V. 1. Cf. L. iii. 1. 

4. the larger hope. Hallam Tennyson (Memoir, I. 321-822) 
explains this : — 

" . . .he means by 'the larger hope' that the whole human 
race would, through, perhaps, endless ages of suffering, be at 
length purified and saved, even those who now ' better not with 
time,' so that at the end of Tlie Vision of Sin we read, 'God 
made himself an awful rose of dawn.' " 

LVI. The destructiveness of Nature offers no hope for man. 
The only answer to life's problems is " behind the veil " of death. 
With this section compare Young, Night Thoughts, VI. 696-711. 
i. 1. Cf. LV. ii. 3. 

2. Scarped : two syllables. 

2-3. The reference is to fossils of extinct animals and plants 
found embedded in rocks. 

ii. 3. breath : the literal meaning of the Latin word spiritus. 
iii-vi. Cf. Prol. iii. 3 ; XXXIV. i. ; CX VIII. 
iv. 4. ravine : an obsolete doublet of rapine. It is used by 
Spenser : — 

" An huge great Dragon, horrible in sight, 
Bred in the loathly lakes of Tartary, 
With murdrous ravine, and devouring might, 
Their kingdome spoild, and couutrey wasted quight." 

— Faerie Queene, Bk. I, Canto vii, stanza 44. 
vi. 1. A monster. Cf . 

" Eternity struck off from human hope, 
(I speak with truth, but veneration too) 
Man is a monster ..." 

— YoTJNo, Night Thoughts, VII. 282-284. 



Page 69] NOTES 221 

2. Note the antithesis between discord and mellow music in 4. 
Dragons of the prime : monsters of the early ages, known now 
only by their fossil remains. Cf. i. 2-3 and note. 

LVII. Uselessness of "the song of woe," for it is "an earthly 
song" ; but Arthur's passing bell will continue to toll in the poet's 
ears. 

The general air of the first two stanzas, and especially the words 
"your cheeks are pale," suggest that this section may have been 
addressed to Emily Tennyson, Hallam's betrothed. 

ii. 2, half my life : an expression which, with slight variations, 
has been used by many writers. Cf. LIX. i. 3 ; also 

" . . . my other heart, 
And almost my half-self . . ." 

— Tennyson, The Princess, I. 55. 

" Half of thy heart {i.e. thy wife)." 

— Gray, The Bard, III. i. 3. 

"... Half of thee 
Is deified before thy death." 
— Prior, An Ode Presented to the King, etc., 159. 

" Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim 
My other half ..." 

— Milton, Paradise Lost, IV. 488. 

" Fernando! oh, thou half myself." 

— EoRD, Lovers Sacrifice, I. i. 

"... Fernando, 
My but divided self ..." 

— Ibid., I. i. 



2 NOTES [Page 09 

"... am not I 
Part of your blood, part of your soul? " 

— Two Noble Kinsmen, II. ii. 179. 
" Half his own heart " (i.e. a bosom friend) . 

— Ibid., IV. i. 14. 

"... this lady, 
The best part of your life . . ." 

— Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, I. 1. 87. 
** I am half yourself." 
— Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, III. ii. 244. 

" I charm you . . . 
That you unfold to me, yourself, your half, 
Why you are heavy ..." 

— Shakespeare, Julius Ccesar, II. i. 274. 
"... you have lost half your soul." 

— Shakespeare, Othello, I. i. 87. 

"... two bodies and one soul. . . ." 

— Lodge, Bosalynde. 

" Halfe of this hart, this sprite, and will, 
Di'de in the brest of Astrophill." 
— Spenser (or Roydon ?), A71 Elegie on Sir Philip Sidney, 77. 

"... my better half . . ." 

— Sidney, Arcadia. 

" . . . O me mihi carior . . . 
Pars animae . . ." 
(" O thou part of my soul dearer to me than myself ") 

— Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII. 406. 



Pages 70-71] NOTES 223 

"... aiiimfe dimidium mefe . . ." 
(" half my soul") 

— Horace, Odes^ 1. iii. 8. 
" . . . te meje . . . partem auimae ..." 
(" thee, part of my soul ") 

— Ihid., II. xvii. 5. 
8-4. Cf. LXXIV to LXXVI. 
iii-iv. The sound of these lines suggests the tolling of a bell, 
iv. With this stanza compare CXXIII. iii. 3-4, and observe the 
great change in tone. 

3. Ave, Ave, Ave. Tennyson himself cites Catullus, Odes^ 
CI. 10. 

"... in perpetuum frater Ave atque Vale." 
(" Hail, brother, aud farewell forever.") 

This was the usual Roman ceremonial of farewell to the dead. 

LVIII. These songs are fruitless, but abiding " a little longer" 
in his grief, he will sing more nobly of the great mystery. 

i. 1. those sad words. See LVII. iv. 3-4, 

iii. 1. The high Muse : Urania. See XXXVII. i. 1, and note. 
3-4. The meaning is : " Dwell upon these thoughts a little 
longer, until thy spirit becomes purer and stronger, until the mys- 
tery of life, death, and immortality is less obscure, and ' thou shalt 
take a nobler leave ' of thy departed friend than that with which 
LVII concludes." 

LIX. Sorrow, his constant and intimate companion, will so 
change her nature that she will hardly seem the same in his later 
songs. 



224 NOTES [Pages 71-73 

Added in 1851 as a pendant to III (H. T.). 

Cf. Ill, and note. Observe how the poet's attitude toward his 
grief has modified. In III Sorrow was a "cruel fellowsliip " ; 
here he pleads with her to live with him in the tender relation of 
a wife. 

i. 1. Sorrow, wilt thou live with me. Cf. 

" His [Shakespeare's] cypress wreath my meed decree, 
And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee! " 

— Collins, Ode to Fear, 70-71. 

" These pleasures. Melancholy, give. 
And I with thee will choose to live." 

— Milton, II Fenseroso, 175-176. 

" These delights if thou canst give. 
Mirth, with thee I mean to live." 

— Milton, L' Allegro, 151-152. 
** Come live with me and be my love." 

— Marlowe, The Fassionate Shepherd to His Love, 1. 

ii. Cf. I. ii. 4 ; CVIII, iv. 3 ; CXIII. i. 1. 
ii. 3. Cf. XL VIII. ii. 2. 

LX. He loves Arthur as a village maiden might love one far 
above her in station. This is the feminine view of an unequal and 
hopeless love. For the masculine view, see LXII. 

LXI. However humble the poet himself is, yet even the greatest 
soul could not love Arthur more. 

i. 1. state sublime. Gray uses the same phrase in his Ode for 
Music, 25. 
1-4. Cf. 



Pages 73-74] NOTES 225 

"Speaks heaven's language, and discourseth free 
To every order, every hierarchy." 

— Ben Jonson, Underwoods^ C. 71-72. 

"... thou now in Elysian fields so free, 
With Orpheus, and with Linus, and the choice 
Of all that ever did in rimes rejoyce, 
Conversest ..." 

— Spenser, The Buines of Time, 332-336. 

2. Thy ransom'd reason. Cf . spirits render'd free, XXXVIII. 
ill. 2. 
ii, ill. Cf. 

" Philisides is dead. O happie sprite, 
That now in heav'n with blessed soules doest hide ; 
Looke down a while from where thou sitst above, 
And see how busie shepheards be to endite 
Sad songs of grief, their sorrowes to declare. 
And gratefull memory of their kynd love." 
— Spenser, A Pastorall ^glogue . . . Sidney, 135 ff. 

ii. 2. slight. Cf. Prol., viii. 1. 
ill. 1-2. Cf. 

" Florello! lately cast on this rude coast, 
A helpless infant, now a heedless child." 

— Young, Night Thoughts, VIII. 240-247. 

4. Shakespeare's writings, especially his sonnets, indicate that 
he understood, appreciated, and felt the nature and power of love. 

LXII. But he is unwilling that Arthur, in his high estate, should 
be embarrassed by his humble love. See note to LX. 
Q 



226 NOTES [Pages 74-75 

i. 1. an eye that's downward cast. This connects with LXI. 
ii. 1. 

ii. 1. declined : stooped. Bradley and the Century Dictionary 
cite 

" . . . to decline 
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor 
To those of mine ..." 

— Shakespeare, Hamlet^ I. v. 50. 

LXIII. Yet Arthur may still love him without embarrassment, 
as one loves a horse or a hound, 
i. 1-2. Cf. 

" He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, 
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse." 

— Tennyson, Locksley Hall^ 50-61. 

" He calls me dear Kebecca," said the maiden to herself, " but it 
is in the cold and careless tone which ill suits the word. His war- 
horse, hishuntinghound, are dearer to him than the despised Jewess." 

— Scott, Ivanhoe, Chap. XXIX. 

" Your dog or hawk should be rewarded better 
Than I have been. . . ." 

— Webster, The White Devil, lY. ii. 

"... what need we know 
More than to praise a dog, or horse . . ." 

— Ben Jonson, Underwoods, LXII. 70-71. 

LXIV. Perhaps Arthur remembers him just as the great of earth 
sometimes kindly recall the humble friends of their youth. 

This section, like XIV, LXXXVI, C, CXXIX, and CXXXI, is 
grammatically a single sentence. 



Pages 76-79] NOTES 227 

AVith the whole section compare Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 
83-96. 

ii. 4. grapples with his evil star. This sort of " mixed figure " 
is not uncommon in modern poetry. Cf. VI. vii. 1-2 ; C VII. iii. 4, 
and notes. 

iii. 2. golden keys: symbolof national treasureship, or, perhaps, 
merely of high and important office. 
3. Cf. CXIII. iii. 3. 

iv. 3. Cf. CXIII. iii. 4. 

LXV. It is a happy thought that his love may even be a good 
influence to Arthur, 
i. 3-4. Cf. 

" Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wastea ; 
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning 
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment." 
— Longfellow, Evangeline, Pt. II. 55 ff. 

ii. Cf . XIII. V. 1 ; XLVIII. iv. 

LXVI. The poet seems "gay among the gay," but "His 
night of loss is always there." A pathetic picture of his helpless- 
ness in his grief by likening him to a man deprived of sight. 
With this picture compare Milton, Paradise Lost, III, Samson 
Agonistes, and his sonnets On His Blindness and On His Deceased 
Wife. 

i. 1. diseased: in the old sense, ill at ease, common in the 
Elizabethan period. 

iv. 1. threads. Cf. any trifle, in i. 



228 NOTES [Pages 79-80 

LXVII. On retiring to rest, he gazes, in fancy, upon Arthur's 
memorial tablet in the changing moonlight. 

Note the softness of tone here, produced by the almost entire 
absence of harsh consonants, 

i. 3. that broad water of the west. The Severn is nine miles 
wide at Clevedon. — Gatty. 

iii. 3. eaves of wearied eyes. Cf. 

" Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eaves." 

— Tennyson, The Talking Oak, 209. 

LXVIII. An illusion of sleep makes him think that Arthur, 
living, is troubled, 
i. 2-3. Cf. LXXI. i. 1 ; also 

" How wonderful is death — 
Death and his brother Sleep! " 

— Shelley, Queen Mab, 1-2. 

«... Oh, thou God of Quiet ! 
Whose reign is o'er seal'd eyelids and soft dreams, 
Or deep, deep sleep, so as to be unfathom'd, 
Look like thy brother, Death, — so still — so stirless — 
For then we are happiest, as it may be, we 
Are happiest of all within the realm 
Of thy stern, silent, and unawakening twin." 

— Byron, Sardanapalus, IV. i. 3-9. 

It is a Greek conceit to make Sleep the twin brother of Death. 
Cf. 

( " To Sleep and to Death, twin brothers ") 

— Homer, Iliad, XVI. 672, 682. (H. T.) 



Pages 80-83] 2^0 T^ 8 220 

ii. Cf. XXII. i-ii. 

ii. 1. The meaning seems to be : "I walk as ere I walked 
(though now forlorn) When all our path," etc. 
2. Cf. XLVI. i. 2. 

iii-iv. While dreaming, he sees "a trouble" upon his friend's 
face ; when he awakes, he perceives that it is his own trouble, 
which his dream has painted upon Arthur's features. 

iii. 4. Cf. XLIV. iv. 2. 

LXIX. A dream symbolizing the evolution of comfort out of 
sorrow. 

iii. 1. I met with scoffs, I met with scorns. The abruptness of 
the consonants in this line produces a very excellent sound-effect. 

iv. 2. an angel of the night. Tennyson explained this to mean, 
" One of the angels of the night of sorrow, the divine Thing in the 
gloom." Perhaps it might be more simply interpreted to mean 
" Divine Comfort." 

LXX. He tries to peer through the gloom and visions of niglit 
to find Arthur's face. It appears, and quiets his soul. 

ii. 3. The metre demands that palled be pronounced with two 
syllables. 

iv. 3. lattice. Cf. 

"... life's a debtor to the grave, 
Dark lattice! letting in ethereal day." 

— Young, Night Thoughts, III. 472-473. 

LXXI. A pleasant dream of their tour in France, in the summer 
of 1830. 

See also the poem In the Valley of Cauteretz, where there is a 
direct reference to this tour. 



230 NOTES [Pages 84-85 

i. 1. Cf. LXVIII. i. 2-3. 

ii. 1. credit. Cf. LXXX. iv. 1, and note. 

3. Cf. LXXXII. iv. 2 ; LXXXIV. xii. 3 ; CXXV. i. 2. 

iv. 4. The breaker breaking on the beach. There is here some- 
thing of the same suggestive sound-effect that is found in the open- 
ing line of tlie poem Breaks break, break. 

LXXII. A storm on the first anniversary of Arthur's death 
brings bitter thoughts again. 

Here again there is very noticeable sound-effect. 

i. 1. Line repeated, XCIX. i. 1. 
3. blasts that blow the poplar white : as the lighter-colored 
under sides of the leaves are turned into view by the wind. 

Cf. 

" The willows, weeping trees, that, twinkling hoar, 
Glauc'd oft upturn 'd along the breezy shore." 

— WoRDSw ORTH, Au Evening Walk, 101-102. 

ii. 1. crown'd estate : manhood. 

V. 4. cancel!' d. An unusual word in modern poetry ; but cf. 
XCV. xi. 4, and 

"... So the Powers who wait 
On noble deeds caucell'd a sense misused." 

— Tennyson, Godiva, 71-72. 

" The world, which cancels Nature's right and wrong, 
And casts new wisdom ..." 

— Young, Night Thoughts, VI. 381-382. 

Milton uses the word {Par. Lost, VI. 379), and it is found fre- 
quently in Shakespeare. 



Pages 86-87] NOTES 231 

LXXIII. The quenching of Arthur's fame suggests the transi- 
toriness of all earthly renown. 
ii. 4. nothing is that errs from law. Cf. 

"... all's love, yet all's law." 

— Browning, ^S'aw?, 242. 

** Infinite pity, yet also infinite rigor of law ; it is so Nature is 
made ; . . . " 

— Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship^ III. 
iii. 3-4. Cf. 

" At worst I have performed my share of the task : 
The rest is God's concern. ..." 

Browning, Paracelsus^ II. 90-91. 

iv. 1-2. Cf. LXXV. iii. 1-2. 

LXXIV. Arthur's death makes apparent his "kindred with the 
great of old." 

i. " Sir Thomas Browne, in his ' Letter to a Friend,' says, with 
reference to some one recently dead, that ' he lost his own face, 
and looked like one of his near relations : for he maintained not 
his proper countenance, but looked like his nncle.' " — Gattt. 

ii-iii. Cf. XXIV. iv. 

ii. 2. I see thee what thou art. Cf. 

" I see thee what thou art." 

— Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur, 291. 

" I know thee who thou art." 

— Mark i. 24 ; Luke iv. 34. 

LXXV. Though not famous upon earth, Arthur is surely gain- 
ing renown elsewhere in the universe. 



232 NOTES [Pages 88-90 

i. 2. Cf. V. ii.; XXXVIII. ii. 3-4. 

ii. 4. give : represent. 

iii. 1-2. Cf. LXXIII. iv. 1-2. 

3. the breeze of song : a tolerably exact translation of Pin- 
dar's phrase, o'vpov v/jlvuv, cited by H. T. 

LXXVI. The ephemeral character of modern poetry. 

i. The second stanza is made up of an injunction: "Take a 
position far off in coming time;" and a result: "You will see 
that our ' deepest lays' will perish before a yew moulders." The 
first stanza seems to be of the same form, but the result is not ex- 
pressed. Perhaps the idea may be rudely presented thus: "Take 
a position far off in space, and, as you gaze back upon the earth, 
you will see how insignificant are all its concerns, and especially 
your ' deepest lays.' " 
3-4. Cf. 

" To look upon him till the diminution 
Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle." 

— Shakespeare, Cymbeline, I. iii. 18-19. (R.) 

ii. 2. Cf. XLI. vi. 3. 

iii. With this stanza compare 

" I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid : 

A little cupola, more neat than solemn, 

Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid 

To the bard's tomb, and not the warrior's column : 
The time must come, when, both alike decay'd, 
The chieftain's trophy, and the poet's volume. 
Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth, 
Before Pelides' death, or Homer's birth." 

— Byron, Don Juan, IV. civ. 



Pages 90-91] NOTES 233 

1. matin songs : the earliest poetry of mankind. See CII. iii. 

2, and note. 

LXXVII. Yet he will continue to sing, for "to utter love" is 
" more sweet than praise." 

i. 4. Foreshorten'd : technical term of the pictorial art. The 
Century Dictionary cites similar use of it by Samuel Butler and 
James Russell Lowell. 

ii. With the ignoble fate which the poet fears for his verses, 
compare 

" To me, divine Apollo, grant — O! 
Hermilda's first and second canto; 
I'm fitting up a new portmanteau ; 
And thus to furnish decent lining, 
My own and others' bays I'm twining — 
So, gentle Thurlow, throw me thine in." 

— Byron, On Lord Thurlow' s Poems. 

" I am just piping hot from a publisher's shop, 
(Next door to a pastry-cook's ; so that when I 
Cannot find the new volume I wanted to buy 
On the bibliopole's shelves, it is only two paces. 
As one finds every author in one of those places)." 

— Byron, The Blues, 17 ff. 

" Better to bottom tarts and cheesecakes nice. 
Better the roast meat from the fire to save, 
Better be twisted into caps for spice, 
Than thus be patched and cobbled in one's grave." 

— Gray, Verses from Shakespeare, 17-20. 



234 NOTES [Page 91 

" And when I flatter, let ray dirty leaves, 

(Like journals, odes, and such forgotten things 
As Eusden, Philips, Settle, writ of kings) 
Clothe spice, line trunks, or, fluttering in a row, 
Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Soho." 

— Pope, Imitations of Horace^ II. 1. 415 ff. 

"And now complete my generous labors lie, 
Finish'd, and ripe for immortality. 
Death shall entomb in dust this mouldering frame, 
But never reach the eternal part, my fame. 
When W . . . and G . . ., mighty names, are dead, 
Or but at Chelsea under custards read, 
When critics crazy bandboxes repair, 
And tragedies, turn'd rockets, bounce in air. 
High-raised on Fleet Street posts, consign'd to fame. 
This work shall shine, and walkers bless my name." 

— Gay, Trivia, III, closing lines. 

" I'd damn my works to wrap up soap and cheese." 

— Pkior, The Seventh Satire of Juvenal Imitated, 54. 

" At Volusi annales . . . 
Et laxas scombris ssepe dabunt tunicas." 
(" But the annals of Volusius shall often furnish loose wrappers 

for mackerel.") 

— Catullus, Odes, XCV. 7-8. 

See also Horace, Epistles, II. i. 264-270. 

iii. 3. A grief, then changed to something else : as his grief be- 
came softened and chastened by time and reflection. 

iv. 2. all the same : hardly equal in dignity to Tennyson's usual 
phraseology. 



Pages 91-92] NOTES 235 

LXXVIII. A family picture at Somersby rectory on the second 
Christmas after Hallam's death. This section should be closely 
compared with XXX and CV, and the tone of incipient and 
growing resignation should be noted. 

i. 2-3. For the rime hearth : earthy compare XXX. i. 2-3, and 
note. 

4. calmly. Cf. XXX. i. 4, and- note. 

ii. 1. yule-clog: the large log of the Christmas fire. For the 
history of the word yule^ see Skeat's Etymological Dictionary : 
clog is a dialectal form of log. For the Christmas ceremonies here 
alluded to, see Washington Irving's Sketch-Book, and Brand's 
Popular Antiquities. 

2. region : the upper air. Keats uses the word in this sense. 
See Hyperion, I, line 9 from end. So also Shakespeare, Hamlet, 
II. ii. 509, 607 ; and Sonnet XXXIII. 

iii. 2. our ancient games. The following lines show these to 
be tableaux vivants and blindman's buff. 

V. 1. last regret, regret can die ! Cf. Ejnl. iv. 2 ; v. 1. 
2. mystic frame. Cf . XXXVI. i. 2. 

LXXIX. The difference between a brother and a friend : a 
brother is like one's self ; a friend furnishes what one lacks. Ad- 
dressed to his brother, Charles Tennyson Turner. 

i. 1. Repeated from IX. v. 4. 
4. To hold ... in fee : to hold in complete possession. Cf. 

" Once did she hold the gorgeous East iu fee." * 

— Wordsworth, Sonnet on Venice. 

ii. 2. moulded ... in Nature's mint. Cf. 



236 NOTES [Pages 93-94 

"... Nature formed but one such man, 
And broke the die — in moulding Sheridan." 
— Byron, Monody . . . on Sheridan^ concluding lines. 

iii. 1. the same cold streamlet : the brook at Somersby. For 
the use of curl'd, see XV. ii. 1, and note, 
iv. 2. One lesson from one book. Cf. 

"... Father Felician, 
Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their 

letters 
Out of the self-same book ..." 

— Longfellow, Evangeline^ 120-122. 

" Par SBtas, par forma fuit ; primasque magistris 
Accepere artes, elemeuta tetatis, ab isdem." 
(" Their age was equal, their beauty was equal, and they received 
their first lessons, the beginnings suited to their age, from the same 
teachers.") 

— Ovid, Metamorphoses, IX. 717-718. 

LXXX. It is a comfort to the poet to think of Arthur's grief 
had their lots been exchanged. 

iv. 1. His credit : a commercial term. Hallam's ledger showed 
a "credit" of the "gain" mentioned in iii. 4; and this "gain," 
or " credit," will be sufficient to set the poet free. Cf. LXXI. ii. 1. 

LXXXI. Death, like a sudden frost upon ripening grain, has 
matured his love for Arthur. 

A puzzling section. Bradley's explanation seems the best. He 
would put an interrogation mark after the first stanza, and he 



Pages 95-96] NOTES 237 

ft 

would explain the second stanza : (" No, I could not have said this, 
and) Love, therefore, had hope of richer store." " J3ut this," the 
poet proceeds, " is a painful thought, for it suggests that I have lost 
the increase of love which would have come if he had lived longer." 

LXXXII. His only complaint of Death is that he and Arthur 
can no longer " hear each other speak." 
i. A notable euphemism, 
ii. 2. From state to state. Cf. XXX. vi-vii ; also 

" Some draught of Lethe might await 
The slipping thro' from state to state." 

— Tennyson, The Two Voices. (H. T.) 

4. Cf. LXXXIV. ix. 1. 
iv. 2. garners. Bradley thinks that only Tennyson uses this 
verb intransitively. 

Cf. LXXI. ii. 3 ; LXXXIV. xii. 3 ; CXXV. i. 2. 

4. Cf. LXXXV. xxi. 4. 

LXXXIII. A welcome to the coming spring, which may burst 
the "frozen bud" of his sorrow. Cf. XXXVIII-XXXIX, CXV. 
The music of delaying long, delay, occurring in i. 2. 4, and then 
recurring, like an echo, in iv. 1. 2., is very effective; and the sound- 
effect is enhanced by the occurrence of five additional '-long" a's 
under the metrical accent (nature, stays, place, April, days) in the 
first two stanzas. In these two stanzas there are eight "long" 
a's in the thirty-two accented syllables; and the reader must feel 
the effect even though he be unconscious of the cause. 

iii. 3. dash'd. Cf. XXIV. i. 4 ; LII. iv. 2. 



238 NOTES [Pages 97-100 



4. Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. Cf. 

" Laburnums, dropping gold." 

— Mus. Hemans, The Palm Tree. 

iv. The longing is realized in CXV. v, 

LXXXIV. A vision of Arthur's happy and useful life with 
Emily Tennyson if he had lived. 

i. 1. contemplate : accented on the second syllable. 

iii. 3-4. with one Of mine own house : with Emily Tennyson, 
to whem Hallani was betrothed. See note to VI. xi. 3. 

iv. 3. Made cypress of her orange flower. Cf. 

"... turned their songs, 
Their mirthful marriage songs, to funerals." 

— Beaumont and Fletcher, Bo7iduca, V. i. 

ix. 1. her earthly robe : her body. Cf. LXXXII. ii. 4. 
xi. 1. arrive : use transitively. Cf. 

" But ere we could arrive the point proposed, 
CfBsar cried, ' Help me, Cassius, or I sink.' " 

— Shakespeare, Julius Ccesar, I. ii. 110. 

"... those powers that the queen 
Hath raised in Gallia have arrived our coast." 

— Shakespeare, 3 Henry Sixth, V. iii. 8. 

xii. 3. Cf . LXXI. ii. 3 ; LXXXII. iv. 2 ; CXXV. i. 2. 

4. The low beginnings of content. Note the gradual subsi- 
dence of his grief. 

LXXXV. Other friendships are possible, even desirable, but he 
can love no other in quite the same way as he loved Arthur, 



Page 101] NOTES 239 

This section is addressed to Edmund Law Lnshington, Pro- 
fessor of Greek at the University of Ghisgow. His marriage witli 
Tennyson's youngest sister, Cecilia, October 10, 1842, is celebrated 
in the Epilogue. 

i. 3. Cf. I. iv. 3 ; XXVII. iv. 3. 

ii. 1. true in word, and tried in deed. Cf. Epil. i. 1 : true 
and tried. 

V. 1. an even tenor kept. Cf. 

" Along the cool, sequestered vale of life, 
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way." 
— Gray, Elegy Written in a Countnj Chnrchijard, 76-76. 

4. God's finger touch'd him, and he slept. Cf. 

"... God's hand beckoned unawares, — 
And the sweet, white brow is all of her." 

— Browning, Evelyn Hope, 15-16. 

vi-vii. Perhaps these two stanzas are due to suggestion from 
Homer, Iliad, XI ; Virgil, ^neid, VI ; Dante, Divina Commedia. 
See further, Shelley, Adonais, xlviii. 7 ; Collins, Ode on the Death 
of Colonel Boss, 26-30 ; Blake, A War Song, last stanza. 

vi. 1. Collins cites 

" Intelligenze, le quail la volgare gente chiama Angeli." 
(" Intelligences which the common people call angels.") 

— Dante, II Convito, ii. 6. 

Cf. also Milton, Paradise Lost, V. 407-408, and 

'* The Spirites and Intelligences fay re. 
And Angels walghting on th' Almighties Chayre." 

— Spenser, The Tears of the Muses, 609-510. 



240 NOTES [Pages 102-106 

2. range. Cf. XXI. vii. 2, and note, 
viii. 3-4. Cf. xix. 1-3 ; C. i. 

ix. This stanza breaks, and yet does not break, the current of 
the thought, the suggestion being that Hallam's virtues well up 
constantly in the poet's mind, provoking the outbreak into apos- 
trophe. 

4. crowned : two syllables. 
XV. 1-2. Cf. VI. xi. 4, observing the change of tone. 
4. The mighty hopes that make us men. Cf. 

" The passions that build up our human soul." 

— Wordsworth, The Prelude^ 407. 

xvi. 4. Cf . I. iv. 1 ; CXXXI. ii. 3 ; also 

"... a love allowed to climb, 
Even on this earth, above the reach of Time." 

— Wordsworth, Sonnet to the Lady E. B.^ etc. 

"... Friendship . . . 
Glorious survivor of old Time and Death! " 

— Young, Night Thoughts, II. 533-534. 

xxi. 4. Cf. LXXXII. iv. 4. 

xxii. 2. the free : spirits freed from the body. Cf. XXXVIII. 

iii. 2. 

4. painless sympathy with pain. This phrase, taking 
" sympathy" in its original sense (" suffering with another"), must 
have produced a very exquisite effect on a finely tuned mind like 
Tennyson's. 

xxiii. 3-4. Cf. LIV. i. 2, iv. 2-3 ; Epil. xxxvi. 3. 

xxiv. 1. So hold I commerce with the dead. Cf. XCIII, XCIV, 
XCV; also 



Pages 107-108] NOTES 241 

" On thee my thoughts shall dwell, nor Fancy shrink 
To hold mysterious converse with thy shade." 

— H. K. White, Elegy . . . Death of Mr. Gill, 19-20. 

xxvii. 2. golden hours. Cf. golden hour, XXXIX. ii. 2. 
xxix. 1. My heart, tho' widow'd. Cf. 

" Denied the endearments of thine eye, 
This widow'd heart would break." 

— CowpER, The Doves, 35-30. 

"Oh, come, relieve this widow'd heart, 
Oh, quickly come, my pride, my love." 

— Ode in Mackenzie's Lounger, No. 85, Sept. 16, 1786. 

" So my forsaken heart, my withered mind, — 
Widow of all the joys it once possessed, . . ." 

— Raleigh, The 21st Book of The Ocean, 85-86. 

XXX. Tennyson offers to Lushington these stanzas just as one 
might offer an imperfectly developed flower in the autumn. 

LXXXVI. A sweet, peaceful evening, after a shower, brings 
quiet to the poet's heart. 

This section was written at Barmouth, probably in 1839. It 
gives a very exquisite suggestion of the peaceful calm that such a 
scene would inspire in an artistic soul. Tennyson himself fre- 
quently quoted it to illustrate "his sense of the joyous peace in 
Nature" ; and Luce regards it as "the very finest" section of the 
poem. Like XIV, LXIV, C, CXXIX, and CXXXI, it contains 
but one sentence. 

i. 4. slowly breathing bare The round of space alludes to the 
gradual dispersal of the clouds. 



242 NOTES [Pages 108-111 

ii. 3. horned. The metre requires two syllables in this word, 
4. fan and blow, with sigh (iii. 1), are imperatives, addressed 
to ambrosial air (i. 1). 

LXXXVII. A vivid picture of college scenes and associations. 

i. 1. the reverend walls : of Trinity College, of course. 

ii. Cf. LVI. iii. 3-4. 

V. 4. Cf. I. iii. 4 ; CV. v. 1. 

vi. 1. a band. This was "The Apostles." Tennyson said that 
it was also called " The Water Club," because there was no wine ; 
and he added : " They used to make speeches. I never did." 

viii. 3. See Introduction, p.xxxii, top. 

ix. 4. Cf. LV. i. 4 ; CXI. v. 4 ; also 

"... in their looks divine 
The image of their maker shone." 

— Milton, Paradise Lost, IV. 291-292. 

X. 4. The bar of Michael Angelo. It is said that Michael An- 
gelo had a distinct ridge above the eyes. Hallam himself once said 
to Tennyson : " Alfred, look over my eyes ; surely I have the bar 
of Michael Angelo." — Memoir^ I. 38 n. 

LXXXVIII. The poet asks the nightingale to explain the inti- 
mate connection of grief and joy. 

i. 2. quicks : hedges of quick {i.e. living, growing) shrubs. Cf, 
CXV. i. 2. 

4. tell me where the passions meet. The thought is that the 
human passions, even such diverse ones as joy and grief, have a 
common source, differing more and more widely as they proceed 
farther from the source. 



Page 112] NOTES 243 

ii. 2-3. Thy spirits m the darkening leaf 
And m the m/dmost heart of grief. 

Observe the identical succession of accented vowel sounds. 
3-4. Cf. 

"... 'tis a gentle luxury to weep." 

— Keats, On the Elgin Marbles, (>. 
" There's bliss in tears." 

— Moore, "Go, let me weep,'' 1, 9. 
"... the luxury of woe." 
— Mo<):iE, Anacreontique (first), 8; in "Little's Poems." 
"... teach impassioned souls the joy of grief." 

— Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope, I. 182. 

** And though remembrance wake a tear, 
There will be joy in gi-ief." 

— Southey, The Dead Friend, concluding lines. 
" . . . it seemed to bring a joy to my despair." 

— Wordsworth, Guilt and SorroiG, 342. 
" Pleasant is the joy of grief." 

— OssiAN, Carrie- TJiura. 
" There is a joy in grief when peace dwells in the breast of the sad." 

— OssiAN, Croma. 
" Sorrow hath its joys." 

— Rev. Christopher Harvey, jTJie Passion, 37. 
" I joy in griefe." 

— Sidney, A Crown of Dizaines, etc., 1. 
" To well felt griefe plaint is the ouely pleasure." 

— Sidney, Song of Lamentation, 51. 



244 NOTES [Pages 112-115 

iii. 2. all : altogether. 

3. the sum of things : probably the great mystery of divine 
purpose in the created universe of man and matter, 

LXXXIX. The happy family circle at Somersby, with Arthur 
as a visitor. 

i. " This lawn [at Somersby] was overshadowed on one side 
by wych-elms, and on the other by larch and sycamore trees." — 
Memoir, I. 2. Cf. XCV. xiv. 3. 

vi. 4. Tuscan poets. Hallam was an earnest student of the 
Italian language and literature. He was especially fond of Dante, 
Petrarch, Tasso, and Ariosto. — Memoir, I. 77. He wrote sonnets 
in Italian, and had begun to teach the language to Emily Tenny- 
son. 

vii. 2-3. happy sister. The reference probably is to Emily 
Tennyson. Hallam thus addresses her, as Parsons points out, in 
one of his poems : — 

" Sometimes I dream thee leaning o'er 
The harp I used to love so well." 

Hallam Tennyson {Memoir, I. 77) says: "The sisters were all 
very musical, my aunt Mary playing the harp and accompanying 
the brothers and sisters who sang." 

viii. 2. the bounding hill. Cf. the bounding main, XI. iii. 4 ; 
the bounding sky, XVII. ii. 2. 

X. 2. still : always. 

xii. 3. crimson-circled star : Venus. " In summer twilight she, 
as evening star, is seen surrounded with the glow of sunset, crim- 
son-circled." — Quoted by Gatty from Spedding's Bacon. 

4. her father's grave. According to the " nebular hypothesis," 



Pages 115-117] NOTES 245 

centrifugal force threw off the planets from the mass of the sun, 
which may, therefore, be poetically considered their "father." 
The meaning of the passage is " before Venus, the evening star, 
had sunk into the sea, as the sun had already done." 

XC. No change of circumstances could possibly make Arthur 
unwelcome if he should return to life. 

ii-v. Similar touches are found in The Lotos-Eaters: Choric 
Song, vi. 

ii. 3-4. Note the repetition of the sound of "long" i in the 
accented vowels. Cf. XVII. iii. 2 ; XLI. i ; XCI. iv. 4. 

iv. 3-4. Bradley quotes Sadi's Gulistan : " Oh, if the dead man 
might come again among the members of his race and his kindred, 
the return of his inheritance would be harder to the heir than the 
death of his relation." 

V. 3. Confusion worse than death. This exact phrase is found 
in the stanza of the Choric Song cited above. 

vi. 1. come. This note is sounded again in XCI. ii. 1, iv. 1, 3. 

XCI. He implores Arthur to come back — in spring or in 
summer — in open day. 

This section seems to indicate some tincture of belief in spiritual- 
ism. Note, however, the positive expressions to the contrary in 
XCII and XCIII. Tennyson had given some attention to spiritual- 
ism, and it is quite possible that XCII and XCIII were written 
long after XCI, and with the specific purpose of counteracting the 
effect of the earlier section, which, however, he did not wish to 
destroy utterly. 

i. 1. larch, see note to LXXXIX. i. 
2. rarely, exquisitely. 



246 JVOTES [Pages 118-11.) 

4. Flits by the sea-blue bird of March. There is an interesting 
and amusing discussion of this line in Rawnsley, pp. 109-110, the 
point being that the poet had forgotten what bird he meant, 
and apparently thought its identity a matter of no moment. He 
afterward "exphiined that he meant the kingfisher. 

iv. 4. like a finer line in light. Note repetition of sound in the 
accented vowels. Cf. XVII. iii. 2 ; XLI. i ; XC. ii. 3-4. 

XCII. Yet, should Arthur appear, the poet might think it a 
hallucination. 

ii. 4. Note the suggestive sound of memory murmuring. 

iii. 4. phantom-warning : the vision of i. 1. 

iv. 1. They refers to prophecies. The meaning is " The prophe- 
cies might not seem thy prophecies." 
3-4. Cf. 

" . . . As the sun, 
Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image 
In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits 
Of great events stride on before the events, 
And in to-day already walks to-morrow." 
— Coleridge's translation of Schiller's Death of Wallenstein^ Y. i. 

" And coming events cast their shadows before." 

— Campbell, LochieVs Warning^ 56. 

XCIII. He will not see Arthur again in the flesh ; but they may 
commune in some mystic way. 

With this section compare CXXII. 

i. 4. when claspt in clay. The clay is the living body as the 
receptacle of the spirit. The word is used in allusion to accounts 



Pages 119-120] NOTES 247 

of the creation of man in our own and other religions. See (-lenesis 
ii. 7. 
ii. Cf. 

" Star to star vibrates light : may soul to soul 
Strike thro' a finer element of her own? 
So, — from afar, — touch as at once? " 

— Tennyson, Aylmcr's Field, 578-580. 

3. Where all the nerve of sense is numb. The meaning seems 
to be that Hallam's spirit may come to Tennyson's, and its presence 
be perceived by some means finer and more delicate than what are 
ordinarily called senses. 

iii. 1. sightless: invisible to mortals ; range: see note to XXI. 
vii. 2. 

In connection with the thoughts of XC to XCIII, it is interesting 
to read : " My father told me that within a week after his father's 
death he slept in the dead man's bed, earnestly desiring to see his 
ghost. ..." — Memoir, I. 72. 

XCIV. Purity of heart and soundness of mind necessary for 
communion with the dead, 
ii. 3. Except: unless. 

XCV. After a quietly happy evening on the lawn at Somersby, 
Arthur's spirit comes and whirls the poet to "empyreal heights," 
where the secret of the universe becomes plain to him ; then doubt 
follows. 

This section is "the crown of In Memoriam, expressing almost 
such things as are not given to men to utter." — Lang, Alfred 
Tennyson, p. 73. 



248 NOTES [Pages 121-123 

iii. 2. filmy shapes : night-moths, 
iv. 2-4. Cf . xiii. 2-4. 
4. Cf. 

"... trees which, reaching round about, 
In shady blessing stretclied their old arms out." 
— Leigh Hunt, The Story of Bimini, iii. 416-417. 

" Mark yonder oaks ! . . . 

they rise 

And toss their giant arms amid the skies." 

— Beattie, The Minstrel^ II. v. 5-8. 
v-ix. Cf. 

" Not to the grave, not to the grave, my Soul, 
Follow thy friend beloved! 

But in the lonely hour, 
But in the evening walk. 
Think that he companies thy solitude ; 
Think that he holds with thee 
Mysterious intercourse." 

— SouTHET, The Dead Ft'iend, iv. 

viii. This stanza is amplified in XCVI. 

2. doubts that drive the coward back. Cf. 

"... our doubts are traitors, 
And make us lose the good we oft might win 
By fearing to attempt." 

— Shakespeare, Measiire for Pleasure, I. iv. 77-79. 

ix. 4. flash'd. Cf . XLI. iii. 4 ; XLIV. ii. 4. 
X. 3. that which is. " T6 6t^, the Absolute Reality." (H. T.) 
He had reached a point from which he could see and understand 



Pages 123-125] NOTES 249 

the everlasting truth and purpose of God in the universe. Cf. 
CXXIV. vi. 1-2. 

xi. 3. my trance. Tennyson {Memoir, I. 320) says : " A 
kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boy- 
hood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon 
me thro' repeating my own name two or three times to myself 
silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the con- 
sciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve 
and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, 
but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest 
of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost 
laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seem- 
ing no extinction but the only true life." He thought that this 
might be the state described by St. Paul in the words: " Whether 
in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body I cannot tell." 
Compare the Prince's "weird seizures." — Tl^e Princess, I. 14, 81 ; 
III. 167-168 ; IV. 538, etc. Compare also The Ancient Sage. 

xiii-xvi. A unique picture of the coming of day. 

xiii. 2-4. Repeated from iv. 2-4. 

XV. 1. freshlier. The poets often prefer forms like this. Cf. 
keenlier (CXVI. i. 2), deeplier, and darklier (CXXIX. iii. 2). 

xvi. Suggestive of " the dawn " of the " boundless day " of the 
after life. 

XCVI. Strength of faith comes from fighting doubt. 

Compare with XXXIII, and see note to XCV. viii. This section 
could hardly have been addressed to one of the poet's sisters, as 
has been suggested, for the Memoir (I. 76) says : " All the Tenny- 
son sons and daughters except Frederick . . . had dark eyes and 
hair." Possibly it was addressed to Miss Sellwood, whom the poet 



250 NOTES [Pages 125-12(3 

afterward married, or to his mother. The Memoir (I. 18) says 
that the latter had great affection for animals, and a great pit}' 
"lor all wounded wings." 

i. 4. Cf. Luke viii. 12. 

ii-v. Cf. CIX. i-ii. 

ii. 1. one indeed I knew. This, of course, was Hallam. 

iii. 3-1. Cf. 

" Rather I prize the doubt 
Low kinds exist without, 
Finished aud finite clods, untroubled by a spark." 

— Browning, Babbi Ben Ezra, 16-18. 

" With me, faith means perpetual unbelief 
Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot, 
Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe." 

— Browning, Bishop Blougrani's Apology^ 666-668. 

iv-v. Cf. Prol. vii-viii, XXXIII. i. 1-2. 

V. 2 ff. Cf. CXXIV. i. 4. 

vi. Cf. Exodus xix. 16 ff.; xxxii. 1 ff. 

XC VII. " Toward his friend, who now lives ' in vastness and in 
mystery,' he feels like a wife who has remained in the simple house- 
hold ways of her maidenhood, while her husband has risen to heights 
of thought or science which she cannot comprehend." — Davidson. 

i. 1. love is here the personification of Tennyson's affection for 
Hallam. 

2-3. The allusion is to the spectre of the Brocken, in the Harz 
mountains. ". . . the ' spectre ' is the observer's shadow thrown 
on a bank of mist. If the bank is near him, his shadow may appear 
enormously extended and, so, ' vast. ' He sees a halo round its head, 



Pages 128-129] NOTES 251 

but not round the head of any fellow-observer's shadow." — Quoted 
by Bradley. 

vi. 2. Cf. XXI. V. 3-4; also 

"... that impious self-esteem 
That aims to trace the secret of the skies." 

— Beattie, The Minstrel^ I. 7-8. 

" Proud man, who rules the globe and reads the stars." 

— Young, Night Thoughts, VII. 308. 

8. Cf. CXXIX. i. 2; CXXX. iv. 1. 
ix. 2-4. Cf. CXXIX. ill. 2. 
4. Cf. 

"The Bactrian was but a wild childish man, 
And could not write nor speak, but only loved." 

— Browning, A Death in the Desert, 649-650. 

** But how this is, ... I know not, and I cannot know ; 
I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love." 

— Blake, The Book of Thel, III. 17-18. 

XCVIII. The poet's brother, Charles Tennyson Turner, about 
to start on his wedding tour, in 1836, will visit Vienna, but the poet 
will never see that city. 

i. 3. I was there with him. The date of their visit was July, 
1832. 

ii. 1. his latest breath. For this use of latest, cf. the latest 
linnet, C. iii. 2. 

iii. 3. Tennyson never saw the city where Hallam died. "To 
that city my father would never go," Hallam Tennyson says, " and 



252 NOTES [Pages 130-131 

he gave me a most emphatic ' no ' when I once proposed a tour there 
with him." — Memoir, I. 149. 
V. 1. Gnarr: growl, snarl. Cf. 

" At them he gan to reare his bristles strong, 
And felly gnarre ..." 

— Spenser, Faerie Queene, I. v. 34. 

vi. 1. mother town: a translation of the Greek fir]Tp6iro\Ls ; 
similarly he writes mother-city in The Princess, I. HI. 

XCIX. The second coming of the anniversary of Arthur's death 
brings a fresh sense of loss which makes the poet a kindred soul with 
all that mourn. 

With this section compare LXXII, noting the difference of tone. 

ii. 3. Cf. LXXXV. viii. 3-4; xix. 1-3; C. i. 

4. holy: because sanctified by the presence in former days 
of Hallam and Dr. Tennyson. 

iii. 3-4. Cf. 

"Where'er his [laughing Autumn's] fingers touch the fruitful grove, 
The branches shoot with gold ..." 

— Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination, I. 290-291. 

"... the hand 
Of Autumn tinges every fertile branch 
With blooming gold and blushes like the morn." 

— Ibid., III. 588-590. 

V. 2. the slumber of the poles. The word slumber is used here 
perhaps because of the comparative lack of motion of the earth at 
the poles, perhaps because of the absence of human activity there, 



Pages 132-133] NOTES 253 

perhaps because of the long periods of darkness (Nature's time for 
slumber), but more probably from a poetic blending or confusion 
of all these. 

C. As the Tennyson family is about to remove from Somersby, 
in 1837, the poet surveys the neighborhood, and finds no spot that 
does not recall his friend. 

Like XIV, LXIV, LXXXVI, CXXIX, and CXXXI, this section 
stands as a single sentence, 
i. Cf. 

"For as the pleasures of his simple day 
Beyond his native valley hardly stray, 
Nought round its darling precincts can he find 
But brings some past enjoyment to his miud." 

— Wordsworth, Descriptive Sketches, 514-517. 

2-3. Cf. XCIX. ii. 3. 
iii. 2. the latest linnet. For this use of latest, cf. his latest 
breath, XCVIII. ii. 1. 
V. 3. leaving is to be connected with I, not with he. 

CI. The old home will be neglected till new associations grow 
up around it. 

"... this exquisite poem . . ." — Bradley. 

The repetition and symmetry of form in Unwatch'd . . . Un- 
loved . . . Unloved . . . Unloved . . , Uncared for add much to 
the strength of this section, full of memories and associations of 
the home at Somersby. 

" In 1892 I visited the old home, and when I returned, told my 
father that the trees had grown up, obscuring the view from the 



254 NOTES [Pages 133-13(; 

Rectory, and that the house itself looked very desolate. All he 
answered was, 'Poor little place.' " — Memoir, I. 2. 

i. The change from shall (line 1) to will (line 3), followed 
again by shall (iii. 2) , is entirely too delicate a matter for analysis 
or explanation. 

4. This maple burn itself away. The allusion is to the fiery 
red appearance of the maple as the leaves change color in the 
autumn. 

iii. 3. the Lesser Wain : the constellation Ursa Minor. Cf . 

" Arthur's slow wain his course doth roll 
In utter darkness round the pole." 
— Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, I. xvii. 

iv. 1. gird. This word alludes to the harsh sounds of the 
boughs striking or rubbing against one another. In the form gride 
it occurs again in CVII. iii. 3. 

CII. "Two spirits of a diverse love " bind the poet's affections 
to his old home. 

ii. 3. The Memoir (I. 72) says that the reference here is to " the 
double loss of his father and his friend"; but the explanation 
which Tennyson furnished to Gatty is : "The first is the love of 
the native place ; the second, the same love enhanced by the mem- 
ory of the friend." The rest of the section, taken in connection 
with C and CI, accords better with the latter interpretation. The 
" two spirits " mingle into one in the last stanza. 

iii. 2. its matin song doubtless refers to Tennyson's part in 
" Poems by Two Brothers," published in 1827. The phrase matin 
song occurs also in LXXVI. iii. 1, and in The Lover's Tale, 226. 

vi. 3. They : the rivals of v. 3. 



Pages 136-139] NOTES 255 

CIII. Perhaps suggested by the removal from Somersby, a 
dream comes to the poet of his removal from this life to the Great 
Beyond, where Arthur awaits him. 

i. 3. I dream' d a vision. According to "an intimate friend" 
of the poet, this dream was an actual experience. 

ii-iv. These stanzas suggest The Winter'' s Tale, V. iii. 

ii. 2. maidens. Tennyson says, " They are the Muses, poetry, 
arts, — all that made life beautiful here, which we hope will pass 
with us beyond the grave." 

o. hidden summits : divine sources. 
4. river : the usual symbol of life. 

iv. 3-4. This suggests the Biblical story of the flood. 
4. sea : the usual symbol of eternity. Cf. The Passing of 
Arthtir, The Holy Grail, 503 ff., and Crossing the Bar. 

V. ff . These stanzas recall the scene in The Passing of Arthur, 
3(U ff. 

vii. The progress of the age in Tennyson's own time. 

viii. Tennyson's own development. Cf. Ejnl. v. 3-4. 

3. Anakim : a race of giants, "the sons of Anak." See 
Numbers xiii. 22, 28, 33 ; Deuteronomy i. 28 ; ii. 10, 11, 21 ; ix. 2. 

4. a Titan's heart. The Titans were fabulous giants of the 
Greeks, the children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gsea (Earth). 

ix. 3. Cf. CXVIII. iv. 2 ; Epil. xxxii. 4. 

X. ff. Cf. CXXV. iv. 1-2. 

xiii. 1. rapt. See note to XXX. vii. 1. 

3-4. The suggestion here is that these maidens (see note to 
ii. 2) will be useful in the after life. 

CIV'. This section and the next refer to the new home of the 
Tennysons at High Beech, Epping Forest. The approach of 
Christmas in strange surroundings brings no happy memories. 



256 NOTES [Pages 140-142 

Contrast CIV with XXVIII. 

i. 1-4. Note the rime, and compare with XXVIII. i. 1-4. 
3. A single church : Waltham Abbey church, about two and 
a half miles from the new home of the Tennysons. 
iii. 3. Cf. XCIX. ii. 3 ; C. i. 3. 

4. new unhallowed ground. Cf. woodlands holy to the 
dead, XCIX. ii. 4, and note. 

CV. Christmas Eve in a strange place breaks old associations, 
but there is a suggestion of good to come. Cf. XXX, LXXVIII. 
iii. 1. abuse : misuse, use wrongfully. 

4. Has broke the bond of dying use. Cf. XXIX. iii-iv. 
V. 1. beat the floor. Cf . beat the ground, I. iii. 4, and note, 
vii. 1. worlds : stars. 

4. The closing cycle : the great final period of history, w^hen 
everything shall be perfect. 

CVI. Taking up the suggestion with which the last section 
closed, the poet adjures the New Year's bells to ring in a new era 
full of all good. 

Cf. 

** Put down the passions that make earth Hell ! 
Down with ambition, avarice, pride, 
Jealousy down ! Cut off from the mind 
The bitter springs of anger and fear ; 
Down, too, down at your own fireside, 
With the evil tongue and the evil ear, 
For each is at war with mankind." 

— Tennyson, Maud, X. iii. 



Pages 142-145] NOTES 257 

ii. 4. One of the bells of the Strasburg cathedral formerly bore 
an mscription closing with this couplet : — 

" Das Bos hinaus, das Gut herein 
Zu lauten soil ihr Arbeit seyn." 

(" Her duty shall be to ring out the evil, ring in the good.") 

Wlien the bell was recast, in 1641, the old inscription was re- 
placed by one much less poetical. 

vii. 2. lust of gold. The phrase occurs also in The Passing of 
Arthur, 295. 

4. the thousand years of peace. Cf. Bevelation xx. 

viii. 4. Tennyson explained this to refer to the time "when 
Christianity without bigotry shall triumph, when the controversies 
of creeds shall have vanished." 

C VII. The poet's mood has so far changed that he can celebrate 
Arthur's birthday, even though it is cold and stormy, " with festal 
cheer." 

iii. 3. grides. See note to gird, CI. iv. 1. 

4. leafless ribs : another "mixed figure." Cf. LXIV. ii. 4, 
and note. 

iv. 1. drifts. Rolfe thinks Tennyson means c?o?i(is, Gatty thinks 
he means snow, Bradley winds or drift-winds, as in Tioo Noble 
Kinsmen, V. iii. 99. Hallam Tennyson says: "Fine snow, which 
passes in squalls to fall into the breaker, and darkens before melt- 
ing in the sea. Cf. The Progress of Spring, 111.'' ^ It is possible 
that he means a light, tenuous, watery vapor, invisible till it piles 
up and blackens in the distance. 



258 NOTES [Pages 145-147 

V. 4. as he were by. Cf. when thou wert by, CX. iii. 1. 
vi. 3. whatever he be. Cf. What art4hou then? CXXX. 
ii. 1. 

CVIII. He will not blindly yield to unreasoning grief, but will 
strive to gain some "fruit,'' some good, from sorrow. 
i. 3. I will not eat my heart. Cf. 

" But thou must eat thy heart away." 

— Byron, Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, vi. 9. 

ii. 1. barren faith. Cf. James ii. 14, 17, 20. 

iii, 1-2. We imagine that angels are formed like human beings, 
and that they spend their time in singing hymns. 

iv. 3-4. 'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise. Cf. I. ii. 4 ; 
LIX. ii ; CXIII. i. 1-2 ; also 

" But grief should be instructor to the wise ; 
Sorrow is knowledge . . ." 

— Byron, Manfred^ I. i, 9-10. 

Cf. also Ecclesiastes i. 18. 
4. Whatever wisdom sleep with thee : although your wisdom 
is gone out of the world, and is therefore not available to the world. 

CIX. He considers Arthur's intellectual and moral character, 
reaching the conclusion that it is his own shame if he have not 
drawn wisdom from association with such a man. 

i-ii. Cf. XCVI. ii-v. 

iv. 4. The blind hysterics of the Celt. Cf. The red fool-fury 
of the Seine, CXXVII. ii. 3. 

vi. 4. Nor let : If I do not let. Cf. FroL xi. 4. 



Pages 148-151] NOTES 259 

ex. Hallam's great influence upon many types of men. 

i. 2. rathe : early. The word occurs also in Lancelot and 
Elaine, 338 ; in Scott, Bokehij, IV. ii. 12 ; Milton, Lycidas, 142 ; 
Sidney, Xicus and Dorus, 79. 

iii. 1. when thou wertby. Of. as he were by ; CVII. v. 4. 

iv. 3. Them and they connect with the following line. 

CXI. " He was, in one word, a gentleman, with all that the 
word implies in manners and morals." — Beeching. 

i. 3. a golden ball. The crown and the sceptre of a king are 
each decorated with a ball of gold. The ornament is said to be of 
Roman origin. See Century Dictionary, s. vv. mound, orb. 

ii. 3. coltish. A rather unpoetic word that was a favorite with 
Tennyson. Cf. The Talking Oak, 121; The Pri7icess,y. 445; 
The Coming of Arthur, 321 ; Bomney's Bemorse, 13. Cf. also 

" Ner. First there is the Neapolitan prince. 
Por. Ay, that's a colt indeed. . . ." 
— Shakespeare, TJie Merchant of Venice, I. ii. 43-44. 

V. 2. villain : low, ignoble. 

3. drew in : contracted, narrowed. 

4. Cf. LV. i. 4 ; LXXXVII. ix. 4. 

CXII. A character so rich and strong makes others seem weak 
and insignificant. 

i. 1. High wisdom is ironical. 

3. glorious insufficiencies : Hallam's unaccomplished greatness. 

4. Set light by narrower perfectness : give little attention to 
those who are more perfect in a smaller way. See next stanza. 



260 NOTES [Pages 152-154 

iv. 4. vassal tides that follow'd thought, as the waters of the 
sea follow the moon, producing tides. 

CXIII. If Hallam had lived, his wisdom would not only have 
guided Tennyson, but would have been beneficent to a troubled 
world. 

i. 1-2. Cf. I. ii. 4 ; LIX. ii. ; CVIII. iv. 3-4, and notes. 

iii. 3. Cf. LXIV. iii. 3. 
4. Cf. LXIV. iv. 3. 

v. The progress of humanity toward the ideal state is marked 
with struggles, sufferings, revolutions, etc. Cf. note to CXVIII. 
V. 4. 

CXIV. Mere knowledge is "earthly of the mind," but wisdom 
is " heavenly of the soul." 

With this section compare Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagina- 
tion, II. 78-86. 

i. 4. pillars. It might easily seem that the allusion here is to 
the Pillars of Hercules, bounding the geography of the ancient 
world; but Tennyson's own note refers to Proverbs ix. 1 : " Wis- 
dom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars." 

(H. T.) 
iii. 4. The allusion is to the birth of Pallas from the head of 
Zeus. 
iv-v. Cf. 

" Philosophy and science, and the springs 
Of wonder, and the wisdom of the worla, 
I have essayed, and in my mind there is 
A power to make these subject to itself." 

— Byron, Manfred, I. 1, 



Page 155] NOTES 261 

" If that I did not know philosophy 
To be of all our vauities the motliest, 
The merest word that ever fool'd the ear. ..." 

— Ihid.,111. i. 

CXV. With the return of spring, full of singing birds and bloom- 
ing flowers, his regret revives — " buds and blossoms like the rest." 

With this section compare XXXVIII and LXXXIII ; also 
Shelley, Adonais^ stanzas xviii-xxi. 

i. 2. burgeons : buds; maze of quick : quickset tangle in hedges. 
Cf. LXXXVIII. i. 2. 
3. squares : fields. 

ii. 4, The lark becomes a sightless song. Cf. 

" No bird, but an invisible thing, 
A voice, a mystery." 

— Wordsworth, To the Cuckoo, 15-16. 
** Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight." 

— Shelley, To a /Skylark, iv. 5. 

" The sacred poets . . . 
. . . straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing, 
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. 
There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shalt go 
A harbinger of heaven, the way to show. 
The way which thou so well hast learn'd below." 

— Dryden, Ode on Mrs. Anne Killegrew. 
Bradley cites 

** Wenn in dem blauen Raum verloren 
Hoch iiber ihn die Lerche singt." 
(" When lost in the blue space the lark sings high above him.") 

— Goethe, An dieEntfernte. 



262 NOTES [Pages 156-160 

CXVI. But there also springs up a hope for a stronger bond 
with Arthur in the other world. 

regret (i. 1) ; Not all (ii. 1) ; Not all regret (iii. 1) form a very 
effective repetition. 

i. 4. prime: spring. Cf. Fr. printemps ; Ital. ptimai-era. 

CXVII. Delay will make the reunion a " fuller gain." 
iii. Lines 1, 2, 3, 4, refer respectively to the hour-glass, the sun- 
dial, the clock, and the motions of the heavenly bodies, all used as 
measurers of time. 

3. toothed. The metre demands that this word have two 
syllables. 

CXVIII. The development of human character, from age to age, 
to fit man for a ' ' higher place. ' ' 

Cf. LVI. iii-vi. 

iii. The allusion is to the "nebular hypothesis " of the origin 
of the solar system. 

iv. 2. Cf. cm. ix. 3 ; Epil. xxxii. 4. 

3. himself in higher place. These words are, in thought 
though not in syntax, in apposition with a higher race. 

V. 1. Cf. Prol. vii. 1 ; XLIV. i. 2. 

4, to end of section. This is a picture of the development of 
the individual man by means similar to those described in CXIII. 
V. for the development of the race as a mass. 

vii. Cf. CXX ; CXXIV. vi. 3-4. 

CXIX. Calmly and peacefully he stands before Hallam's old 
home, musing over "early days and thee." Cf. VII, and note the 
change of feeling. 



Pages IGO-lGl] NOTES 263 

i. 1-2. Cf. VII. i. 3-4. 

ii. 3. A light-blue lane of early dawn. Cf. 

" The owlets through the long blue night 
Are shouting to each other still." 

— Wordsworth, The Idiot Boy, 287-288. 
iii. 4. Cf . VII. ii. 1 ; XIII. ii. 3. 

CXX. His songs have brought the conviction that man is more 
than mere mind and matter. 

Cf. CXVIII. vii. ; CXXIV. vi. 3-4. 

i. Cf. XLIII. i.-iii. 

i. 3. magnetic mockeries. Cf . electric force, CXXV. iv. 3. 
4. Cf. 1 Corinthians xv. 32. 

iii. The first three lines were spoken ironically against mere 
materialism, so Gatty informs us, but, quoting Tennyson, " not 
against evolution." The first edition does not italicize born in 
line 4. 

CXXI. Written at Shiplake, February, 1850. A very beautiful 
simile. Just as the evening star dies, and is renewed in the 
morning star, ready to gaze upon the renewal of the world's activi- 
ties, and leading in the greater light of the sun, so the poet passes 
through the interval between the past and the present, and is pre- 
pared to take a larger, clearer view of the great problem of life, 
with strong hope for the future. 

iii. 1 ; V. 1. Cf. IX. iii. 2. 

V. 1. Hesper-Phosphor, double name. Cf. 

"... revertens, 
Hespere, mutato . . . nomine . . ." 
("Thou, Hesperus, returning with an altered name.") 

— Catullus, Odes, Ixii. 34-35. 



264 NOTES [Pages 162-164 

CXXII. "If thou wert with me when I was groping in the 
gloom, be with me again now, that ' every thought may break out 
a rose.' " 

With this section compare XCIII. 

i. 2. doom : the loss of his friend. 

iv. 3. the former flash of joy : his short companionship with 
Hallam. 

V. 2. every dew-drop paints a bow. Rainbow colors are seen 
in the dewdrops glistening in the sun. 

CXXIII. Material things change, but the spiritual endures ; he 
cannot believe that he has lost his friend forever. Cf. 

" Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doomed : 
Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale, 
And gulfs the mountain's mighty mass entombed, 
And where th' Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloomed." 
— Beattie, The Minstrel., II. i. 

Cf. also Ovid, Metamorphoses, I. 285-300. 
ii. A poetic description of the erosion of land by water, etc. 
iii. Cf. LVII. iv, observing the hopeless tone of the earlier 
passage and the hopefulness of the later one. 

CXXIV. He has found God not by examining the external, ma- 
terial world, but by studying his own soul. 
With CXXIV compare LIV. 
i-ii. Cf. 

"... Thou apart, 
Above, beyond ; Oh, tell me, mighty Mind, 
Where art thou ? Shall I dive into the deep ? 



Pages 164-166] NOTES 265 

Call to the sun ? Or ask the roaring winds 
For their Creator? Shall I question loud 
The thunder, if in that the Almiglity dwells? " 

— Young, Night Thoughts, IV. 390-395. 

i. 4. Of. XCVI. V. 2. 

ii. 1-4. On the other hand compare 

** I found Him in the shining of the stars, 
I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields, 
But in His ways with men I find Him not." 

— Tennyson, The Passuig of Arthur, 8-10. 

How the poet actually found Him in the present instance will be 
learned in iii ff. 

4. petty cobwebs. Cf. " the sophist's rope of cobweb," — 
Beattie, The Minstrel, I. Ivi. 6. 

iv. 4. "I have felt." Cf. 

" All I can sing is — I feel it ! " 

— Browning, Natural 3Iagic, 10. 

v.-vi. Cf. LIV. V, and note. 
V. 2. blind clamour connects with iii. 2-4. 
vi. 2. What is. Cf. XCV. x. 3 : that which is, and note. 
3-4. Cf. CXVIII. vii.; CXX. 

CXXV. The bitterness of his song at times does not mean that 
he had lost hope or love. 

i. 2. Cf. LXXI. ii. 3 ; LXXXII. iv. 2 ; LXXXIV. xii. 3. 

ii. 3. gracious lies. Cf. glorious lies, C XXVIII. iv. 2 ; "grace- 
ful lying," — Browning, The Bing and the Book, III. 035; 
"0 splendidly mendacious," — i6 id., IX. 832; "excellent false- 



266 NOTES [Pages 166-168 

hood,"— Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra^ I. i. 40 ; " splendide 
meiidax," — Horace, Odes^ III. xi. 31. 

"... I must now accuse you 
Of such a feigned crime as Tasso calls 
Magnanima menzogna, a noble lie, 
'Cause it must shield our honors." 
— Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, III. ii. 158 ff. 

See Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered^ II. 22. 
iii. 2. He: Love (ii. 3). 

4. Note royal, leading gracefully up to king in CXXVI. i. 1, 
iv. 1-2. Cf. cm. X ff. 

CXXVI. Safety and satisfaction under the dominion of Love. 
This section is closely connected with the next two. 
i. 1. Cf. XLVL iv. 1 ; XLVIII. ii. 4, and note ; also 

" For Love will still be lord of all." 

— Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel^ 
VL xi. 4, 8, 12 ; xii. 4, 8, 12, 16. 

i. 1, ii. 1. Note inversion. 

iii. 4. all is well: the old watchman's cry at night. It is re- 
peated in CXXVII. i. 1 and v. 4, making a very effective echo. Cf. 

" God's in his heaven — 
All's right with the world." 

— Browning, Pippa Passes, I. 227-228. 

CXXVII. He has an abiding faith that "all is well" — even 
in times of most tremendous catastrophe. 
ii. 3. The red fool-fury of the Seine. This has been interpreted 



Pages 168-172] NOTES 267 

to refer to the outbreaks in France in 1830 and 1848, but the refer- 
ence is probably to the revolution of 1789. Cf. CIX. iv. 4. 
iii. 1. ill for him that wears a crown. Cf. 

" Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." 

— Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV, III. i. 31. 
V. 2-4. Cf. 

"... through the iumost veil of heaven, 
The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." 

— Shelley, Adonais, Iv. 

CXXVIII. His strong love for his friend is comrade of his faith 
in the ultimate destiny of man. 
ii. o. throned must be pronounced in two syllables, 
iv. 2. Cf. CXXV. ii. 3, and note, 
vi. 2-4. Cf. Beattie, The Minstrel, I. xlix. 

CXXIX. When he dreams the most vivid "dream of good," 
Arthur's personality pervades it all. 

This section, like XIV, LXIV, LXXXVI, C, and CXXXI, is a 
single sentence. 

i. 2. Cf. XCVII. vi. 3 ; CXXX. iv. 1. 

iii. 2. Cf. XCVII. ix. 2-4. 

4. And mingle all the world with thee. This thought 
leads directly to CXXX, where it is amplified. 

CXXX. He perceives Arthur's "diffusive power" everywhere 
in nature. 

i-iii. Cf. Shelley, Adonais, xlii. 

iii. 3-4. Cf. Prol. x. 3-4. 

iv- 1. Cf. XCVII. vi. 3 : CXXIX. i. 2. 



268 NOTES [Pages 172-175 

CXXXI. A prayer for purity and faith. 

This section, like XIV, LXIV, LXXXVI, C, CXXIX, is a 
single sentence. 

i. 1. living will. Tennyson's own explanation is 

" Free-will, the higher and enduring part of man." 

3. spiritual rock. Cf. 1 Corinthians x. 4. 
ii. 1-2. Cf. Prol. iii. 1. 

3. the conquer'd years. Cf. I. iv. 1, and note ; also LXXXV. 
xvi. 4. 

4. Cf. 1 Corinthians iii. 9 ; 2 Corinthians vi. 1. 
iii. 1-2. Cf. ProL i. 3-4, vi. 1 ; LIV. iv. 1-2 ; LV. v. 
Epilogue. The Epilogue celebrates the marriage of Edmund 

Law Lushington and Cecilia Tennyson, the poefs youngest sister, 
October 10, 1842. 

i. 1. Cf. LXXXV. ii. 1. 
2. Demand not thou a marriage lay. We may suppose that 
as he could not write " a marriage lay " for Hallam and Emily, he 
had not the heart to write one for Lushington and Cecilia. 

ii. 4. that dark day : the day of Hallam 's death. 

v. 1. Regret is dead. Cf. LXXVIII. v. 1 : last regret, regret 
can die ! 

3-4. Cf. cm. viii. 

viii. 3. the star that shook. Cf. 

"... concussitque micantia sidera mundus." 
(" . . . and the firmament shook its glittering stars.") 

— Catullus, Odes, Ixiv. 206. 

X. 3-4. all that weight Of learning. Rev. G. C. Bradley, Dean 
of Westminster, in a letter to Hallam Lord Tennyson, says ; 



Pages 176-178] NOTES 2G9 

"... the Lushington brothers, especially the Professor, 'Uncle 
Edmund,' as I have always heard you term him, seemed as much 
at home in the language of the Greek dramatists as if it was their 
native tongue." —Memoir^ I. 204. Cf. 

" Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit 
Which in our winter woodland looks a flower." 
— Tennyson, A Dedication ("Dear, near, and true . . .") 

xii. 1. danced her on my knee. " My aunt Cecilia (Mrs. Lush- 
ington) narrates how in the winter evenings by the firelight little 
Alfred would take her on his knee, with Arthur [Tennyson] and 
Matilda leaning against him on either side, the baby Horatio be- 
tween his legs ; and how he would fascinate this group of young 
hero-worshippers, who listened open-eared and open-mouthed to 
legends of knights and heroes." — Memoir, I. 5. 

xiii. 2. Her feet ... on the dead. The reference is to graves 
inside the church, even with the floor, and covered with slabs. 
3. tablets : commemorative tablets on the wall, 

xxii. 2. a stiller guest : Hallam's spirit. Cf . XXX. ii. 4, and 
note. 

xxvii. 4. a rising fire : the glow from the moon just about to 
appear above the horizon. 

XXX. 3. Cf. 

"The splendour falls on castle walls." 

— Tennyson, The Princess, IV. 

xxxii. 3-4. Cf. XL. iv. 3-4, and notes there. 

4. Cf. cm. ix. 3 ; CXVIII. iv. 2. 
xxxiii. 4. Nature like an open book. Cf. 



270 I^OTES [Pages 181-182 

** To these the Sire Omnipotent unfolds 
The world's harmonious volume, there to read 
The transcript of himself ..." 
— Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination, I. 99-101, 

"... God, who made the great book of the wotld." 

— Wordsworth, The Brothers, 267 

" . . .in the fair contents of Nature's book 

We may the wonders of Thy wisdom read." 
— Sir Henry Wotton, Translation of the CIV Psalm. 
"... she looks 
On Nature's secret there in heaven, as her own books." 
— Ben Jonson, Underwoods, C. 69-70. 

XXXV. 4. Cf. Prol. X. 3. 

xxxvi. 3-4. Cf. LIV. 1. 2, iv. 3 ; LXXXV. xxiii. 3-4 ; also 

" Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs." 

— Tennyson, Locksley Hall, 138. 

* ' . . . an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power ; 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good." 

— Wordsworth, The Excursion, IV. 12-17. 

"... Heaven's dread decree . . . 
Which bade the series of events extend 
Wide through unnumbered worlds, and ages without end." 

— Beattie, The Minstrel, I. xlix. 
Cf. also The Minstrel, II. xlvii ; Akenside, The Pleasures of 

Imagination, II. 323 ff. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Again at Christmas did we weave 
A happy lover who has come 
And all is well, tho' faith and form 
And was the day of my delight . 
As sometimes in a dead man's face 

Be near me when my light is low 
By night we linger'd on the lawn 

Calm is the morn without a sound 
Contemplate all this work of Time 
Could I have said while he was here 
Could we forget the widow 'd hour 



Dark house, by which once more I stand 
Dear friend, far off, my lost desire 
Dip down upon the northern shore 
Doors, where my heart was used to beat 
Dost thou look back on what hath been 
Do we indeed desire the dead 

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore . 
From art, from nature, from the schools 

Heart-affluence in discursive talk 
He past ; a soul of nobler tone 



LXXVIII 

vin 
cxxvn 

XXIV 
LXXIV 

L 

XCV 

XI 

CXVIII 

LXXXI 

XL 

VII 
CXXIX 

Lxxxm 

CXIX 

LXIV 

LI 

IX 
XLIX 

CIX 
LX 



271 



272 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Her eyes are homes of sileut prayer XXXII 

He tasted love with half his mind XC 

High wisdom holds my wisdom less CXII 

How fares it with the happy dead XLIV 

How many a father have I seen . . . . . . LIII 

How pure at heart and sound in head XCIV 

I cannot love thee as I ought LII 

I cannot see the features right LXX 

I climb the hill : from end to end C 

I dream'd there would be Spring no more .... LXIX 

I envy not in any moods XXVII 

If any vague desire should rise LXXX 

If any vision should reveal XCII 

If, in thy second state sublime LXI 

If one should bring me this report XIV 

If Sleep and Death be truly one XLIII 

If these brief lays, of Sorrow born XLVIII 

I hear the noise about thy keel X 

I held it truth, with him who sings I 

I know that this was Life, — the track .... XXV 

I leave thy praises unexpress'd LXXV 

In those sad words I took farewell LVIII 

I past beside the reverend walls LXXXVII 

I shall not see thee. Dare I say . . . . . . XCIII 

I sing to him that rests below XXI 

Is it, then, regret for buried time CXVI 

I sometimes hold it half a sin V 

It is the day when he was born CVII 

I trust I have not wasted breath CXX 

I vex my heart with fancies dim XLII 

I wage not any feud with Death ...... LXXXII 

I will not shut me from my kind CVIII 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



273 



Lo. as a dove when up she springs 
Love is and was my Lord and King 

" More than my brothers are to me " . 
My love has talk'd with rocks and trees 
My own dim life should teach me this . 

Now fades the last long streak of snow 
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut 

O days and hours, your work is this . 

Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then . 

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good . 

Old warder of these buried bones 

Old Yew, which graspest at the stones 

O living will that shalt endure 

One writes, that " Other friends remain " 

On that last night before we went 

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship . 

O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me 

O thou that after toil and storm . 

O true and tried, so well and long 

Peace ; come away : the song of woe . 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky . 
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again 

Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun . 
Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance 
" So careful of the type ? " but no 
So many worlds, so much to do . 
T 



274 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Still onward winds the dreary way 
Strong Son of God, immortal Love 
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air 
Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt 

Take wings of fancy, and ascend . 

Tears of the widower, when he sees 

That each, who seems a separate whole 

That which we dare invoke to bless 

The baby new to earth and sky . 

The churl in spirit, up or down 

The Danube to the Severn gave . 

The lesser griefs that may be said 

The love that rose on stronger wings 

The path by which we twain did go 

There rolls the deep where grew the tree 

The time draws near the birth of Christ 

The wish, that of the living whole 

This truth came borne with bier and pall 

Tho' if an eye that's downward cast 

Tho' truths in manhood darkly join 

Thou comest, much wept for : such a breeze 

Thy converse drew us with delight 

Thy spirit ere our fatal loss . 

Thy voice is on the rolling air 

'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise 

'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand 

To-night the winds begin to rise . 

To-night ungather'd let us leave . 

To Sleep I give my powers away . 

Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway 
Urania speaks with darken'd brow 



XXVI 

Prologue 

LXXXVI 

LXV 

LXXVI 

XIII 
XLVII 
CXXIV 
XLV 
CXI 
XIX 
XX 
CXXVIII 
XXII 
CXXIII 
XXVIII, CIV 
LV 
LXXXV 
LXII 
XXXVI 
XVII 

ex 

XLI 

cxxx 

CXIII 

XVIII 

XV 

cv 

IV 

CI 
XXXVII 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



270 



We leave the well-beloved place . 
We ranging down this lower track 
Whatever I have said or sung 
What hope is here for modern rhyme 
AVhat words are these have fall'n from 
When I contemplate all alone 
When in the down I sink my head 
When Lazarus left his charnel-cave 
When on my bed the moonlight falls 
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch 
Who loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail 
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet 
Witch-elms, that counterchange the floor 
With such compelling cause to grieve . 
With trembling fingers did we weave . 
With weary steps I loiter on 

Yet if some voice that man could trust 
Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven . 
You leave us : you will see the Rhine . 
You say, but with no touch of scorn . 
You thought my heart too far diseased 



CII 
XLVI 

cxxv 

LXXVII 

XVI 

LXXXIV 

LXVIII 

XXXI 

LXVII 

XCI 

CXIV 

LXXXVIII 

LXXXIX 

XXIX 

XXX 

XXXVIII 

XXXV 

LXIII 

XCVIII 

XCVI 

LXVI 



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